Between Minds
by 3theCaptain
Summary: After surviving her battle with GLaDOS, Chell wakes in Aperture Science and makes another escape attempt. Meanwhile, after his ordeals through City 17, Gordon wakes at White Forest and tries to recover the Borealis and Judith Mossman... Or at least, that was the plan. The unexpected throws Chell, Gordon, Alyx, and Barney down paths toward inevitable consequences.
1. Prologue

**Prologue**

Dog lay curled up on the concrete floor of the helicopter hangar, a metallic, high-pitched whine escaping him. He should never have left his pack.

There had been a large blue storm in the sky made out of clouds, like a giant upside-down pool of water pouring out of the Citadel. Dog wasn't too sure what it was, but it was giving off strange signals all along the light spectrum, and everyone seemed worried about it until they launched that rocket. The rocket flew up, up, up... until it disappeared behind the clouds. With a flash of light that vibrated the ground even from their distance, the bluish bands of vapor faded out of existence.

Master, Alyx, and Gordon burst into cheers. Alyx turned and said, "We _did_ it, Gordon!"

Dog didn't know what all the jubilee was about, but he was content to sit back and be happy his pack was happy; even the new member, the orange man named Gordon, whom Alyx seemed to be so fond of. For the first time since those interlopers on three legs had torn his territory apart, Dog felt safe.

But... no, something was off. Some sort of signal flashed from deep in the trees. Curious, he cocked his head toward the forest.

_What is that?_ he thought. The signal was like a sound, but - not. It happened again.

_What IS that?_ It was like a flash, but _not_. He looked at his pack to see if they had noticed. They were still smiling and talking; Master and Alyx hugged, and spoke to Gordon, who looked tired, so tired, but peaceful.

"I'll bet the Combine aren't too happy right now!" she boasted.

Master leaned heavily on his false leg. "You got _that_ right, sweetheart, but we've got plenty to celebrate. I wish you didn't have to head off so soon..."

They hadn't even noticed. As they kept speaking, Dog resolved to investigate the signal from the woods. It was like a beacon, riding on a frequency their ears couldn't hear, their eyes couldn't see, calling him through the trees.

_It must be an intruder,_ he decided. _An intruder_, he thought indignantly, _in MY territory!_ He clambered over the fence after the beacon, after the intruder. Behind him, he heard Alyx say, "Dog? Hey, where are you -" but he kept running. Her shrinking voice said, "What a _nut_. Don't go too far!"

It was a strange sound, yet oddly familiar, like something he occasionally heard hovering behind the white noise on an abandoned radio frequency. It was mechanical, like him, but also alien, like his vort friends. As he ran through the trees its source eluded him, weaving oddly through the forest unlike a vehicle, unlike an animal.

As he ran farther and farther from the base, he grew uncertain. But he was getting close, he was getting so close to catching the - the thing on _his_ territory. Just when he was about to turn back, he came upon a small meadow and stopped in his tracks. Dominating the clearing was a... what was that? A huge, white bean in a metal case? With a snout? He scrutinized it with more curiosity than fear. It hovered a few feet off the ground. Well, it was definitely the source of the signal.

No sooner did he think that than the beacon suddenly switched off and the creature made an abrupt mechanic whine of smug victory and shot straight up into the air. Dog craned his neck to follow its flight; ha, funny, it almost seemed to be heading toward base...

Dog's iris twitched. _Oh, no._ It was moving so quickly, _straight_ the way he had just come. _Oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no!_ He ran so fast his feet dug little holes into the earth and the surrounding greenery was a cold blur.

He could hear them before he could see the hangar. There were voices, screams!

Master's strangely calm voice said, "I love you, sweetheart. Close your eyes, honey!"

Alyx yelled, "I love you, Dad!"

"Don't look -" but his words were cut short by a horrible crunching, squelching sound and Alyx screaming, "No! Oh my God, _no!_"

He counted down the meters to the base until finally, finally, finally, the hangar came into view. Dog leapt up the wall and stuck his head through a hole in the roof. It took him a moment to digest what he saw: Gordon was pinned against a wall by an unnatural force, his face tortured. There were _two_ of the strange creatures! One was holding Master by the neck, but he was so still, so terribly still, and the other was slowly dragging Alyx toward it. She was weeping, struggling weakly, her face twisted with despair. She managed to half-turn her head and cry, "_Gordon,_" but stopped when her eyes locked on the hole in the roof. "Dog!"

Dog jumped. He plowed his iron fist through the metal casing of the creature holding Alyx over and over until it dropped her, its companion dropped Master, and they retreated through the ceiling. After that, the only thing he could do was stand there and watch as she cradled Master.

Shame. Shame overwhelmed him until all he wanted to do was curl up in a corner, bury his head, and never move from that spot.

Master was dead, and he was a very bad dog.


	2. Welcome!

**Welcome!**

"Welcome! To the Aperture Science Extended Relaxation Center. You have been in suspension for –7– days."

She blinked open her eyes and stared at the ceiling.

"We hope you enjoyed your period of extended relaxation, and would like to remind you that you cannot hold Aperture Science Laboratories nor any of its affiliates accountable for any physical, mental, emotional, physiological, and/or neurological damage you may have acquired during your extended relaxation. We would like to wish you a good day and luck in locating any psychologists, grief counselors, physical therapists, and/or undertakers you and/or your loved ones may require."

_What?_ She didn't catch any of that. Yellow-white ceiling panels stared down at her.

The robotic voice continued. "We at the Extended Relaxation Center would like to remind you that the bed you are in is called a 'bed,' and that you are in it. Please extract yourself from the bed."

The woman located her muscles and, after limply tearing the covers off herself, literally rolled out of the bed. Pain shot through her limbs as she hit the carpet. She tried to push herself into a sitting position, but her arms collapsed beneath her.

_Think, girl._ She told herself. _You've gotten yourself out of plenty of unexplained situations. You have to THINK. Let's start easy. What's my name?_

Her memory flowed back. She saw Matthew from history class – a dog barking – flowers on a windowsill – bagels with cream cheese…

_Stop,_ she reminded herself. _Name_. She rolled onto her back and closed her eyes. The robotic voice droned on and on.

_Chell._ The word came naturally. She opened her eyes and saw, again, the ceiling. She mouthed her name silently, as though foreign to her.

"Good," the robotic intercom said. "This concludes the gymnastic portion of your mandatory physical and mental wellness exercise."

Her name echoed in her mind. _Chell, Chell, hell, hell, hell… _she saw herself being lowered into roaring flames, flying through the air, a horrible voice from above… then a great, gut-wrenching explosion.

"You will hear a buzzer. When you hear the buzzer, stare at the art." BZZZZ!

Chell craned her neck to view the pithy painting of mountains and a lake.

"You should now feel mentally reinvigorated. If you suspect…"

As she settled her head back into a comfortable position, she glanced down at her body. She choked back a gasp.

Her knees were wrapped in gauze. _They've taken out my knee replacements. _She lifted her orange shirt to see more gauze. _Burns from the explosion._ Her arms were crisscrossed with stitches. _The landing_.

A curious device was wrapped around her right wrist. It looked like a wide white band with a small display panel on the inside of her wrist. At that moment, it was flashing, "Heartbeat: 73 b/m – Blood Pressure: 110/83 – Internal Temperature: 98.1"

As her memory returned, a spark of hope alighted in her chest. _So,_ she thought,_ did I make it out? Is this a hospital?_ When she realized the mechanical voice was still talking, she thought at it, _Oh, would you just SHUT UP?_

"… so if you could return to your designated sleeping unit, or 'bed,' we in the Extended Relaxation Center of Aperture Science Laboratories would like to assure you, the sweetest cake you will eat will be in your dreams."

Chell was frozen. _Did that just say 'Aperture Science'?_ The spark in her chest was extinguished.

_I gotta get out of here._

The voice repeated itself, "Return to your bed. Sweet dreams!"

Chell strained, trying to move herself from off the floor, but could only manage a weak wriggle like a turtle caught on its back.

"Aperture Science relaxation volunteers who do not return to their bed will receive an 'Unsatisfactory' demerit on their record. Followed by -" static covered the next few words. "Sweet dreams!"

_Think!_ Chell's mind shouted. Her eyes flashed around the room for an exit. _The door – too far, too obvious. No window. No cracks in the walls. The ceiling panels! But how to get at them?_

As she was thinking, a panel of the carpeted floor directly beneath Chell slowly lifted her limp form level to the bed, then tilted itself so she rolled onto the sheets. It slid back into place.

"Due to the continued resistance of the volunteer, Aperture Science's Aperture Science Panels will gently force the volunteer to his/her designated relaxation unit."

The bed must have given her a sleeping drug, because it wasn't long before Chell's thoughts blurred and her eyes drooped shut.

_Must… escape…_ but the world was growing dark.

"Sweet dreams."

* * *

><p>"Welcome! To the Aperture Science Extended Relaxation Center. You have been in suspension for -50- days."<p>

Chell wasted no time; she extracted herself from the bed relatively smoothly. As she shifted her weight to her feet to stand, her knees gave way and she sank to the floor. She examined them. They were no longer wrapped in gauze, but each knee bore a deep, raw, X-shaped scar. Her hand slid up her shirt and brushed along her burnt side. The flesh was sore and slightly bumpy, but covered in thin pink skin. Her arms were devoid of stitches; they were now abstractly stained with what looked like iodine. Using the bed as a support, Chell slowly raised herself to her feet, ignoring her straining knees.

The robot intercom suddenly spoke, making Chell flinch. "Please look at the ceiling."

_Man I'm jumpy. Usually I don't scare that easily._

"Please look at the ceiling," it repeated.

_Oh yeah, like there's any choice in the matter._ She looked up.

As the voice continued to drone on, Chell gingerly circled the room, placing one foot in front of the other with great care as though walking on broken glass. She rapped her knuckles along the walls without a significant change of sound. She unlatched the rod for hanging coats in the closet and used it to prod the ceiling panels. None of them budged.

She stiffened when her robotic nanny instructed her to return to bed.

_... But my legs ARE fairly tired,_ she conceded. _And I can't exactly escape in this condition._ The bed loomed before her. _I'll just see how much I heal this time. Maybe something new will present itself?_

With one last glance around the room, Chell laid down and closed her eyes. _I will destroy this room if I have to_.

* * *

><p>"Welcome! To the Aperture Science Extended Relaxation Center! You have been in suspension for -100- days."<p>

"-150- days."

"-250- days."

"-400- days."

Chell wasn't keeping track anymore. Eventually the voice just started repeating, "Nine, nine, nine, nine, nine," like it was a German who _really_ didn't agree with the situation.

Her burns faded to near the color of her skin, and the cuts on her arms became nothing more than criss-crossed scars. When her knees had healed to the point they didn't so much as pop when she stood, she woke with opaque, form-fitting boots on her feet. With them on, a light jump could send her four feet in the air and she didn't even notice the landing.

It felt as though she was trapped in a never-ending loop. The room and the robotic nanny were so maddeningly repetitive she could feel the threads of her sanity begin to unravel. Once, she flinched when she thought she caught a glimpse of a human figure flash across the television screen. She was only able to register short, dark hair before the image flickered off. It was unplugged.

_But I could have sworn I saw something! Also, what's the point of having a television if it's not plugged in?_

She never remembered her time in suspension. _For all I know,_ she once thought, legs dangling idly off the edge of the desk, _I've been taking two-minute naps and the intercom is just spouting random numbers._

One session, she screamed as loud as she could for help. Another time, she slammed her side into the wall so hard she dislocated her shoulder. Once, Chell smashed the television, gripped a long, sharp, pointy piece (_that's the technical term, of course,_ she thought) and tried to pick the lock of the door. The door electrocuted her, and a new television had appeared by the time she awoke again. She'd kick the walls with as much of a running start as she could muster. The boots, she soon discovered, automatically landed perfectly balanced without any effort on her part. Somehow, they managed to channel the momentum of her entire body into the landing.

Other sessions, she would limply do everything she was told, silently mouthing along with the pre-recorded robotic messages.

Finally, she simply didn't get out of bed.

_Think_, an old, familiar part of her mind whispered.

She groaned. _I'm tired of thinking. I just wanna sleep._

_Listen to me,_ the voice ordered, _Get. UP!_

She rolled out of bed just like that very first day. There was no pain, but as she hit the carpet an idea struck her like a bolt of lightning. A plan raised its head in her mind. It was unclear and out of focus; she tried not to think about it too hard so as not to scare it away.

When Chell awoke fifty days later, she knew what to do.

She didn't feel groggy this time. Her muscles hummed as though flowing with electricity, but she made a point to stretch anyway.

_You want me to look at the ceiling? Sure, why not, it's a pretty ceiling. Every square is my friend._

_Oh, what's that? You'd like me to re-admire this painting? Why sure, I'd love to… I must have torn that thing thirty times and they just keep replacing it. Do they have a printing factory set aside for this one horrible painting?_

"Please return to your designated sleeping unit," the recording ordered. For once, Chell savored the repetitive voice. She knew this would be the last time she heard it.

She turned to her bed; she quickly brushed away the strange mixture of disgust and nostalgia it conjured in her. She walked around it to one side, trailing the tips of her fingers along the sheets.

A tiny bloodstain marked the spot on the carpet she had rolled onto so long ago. She lay down on the floor.

"Aperture Science Relaxation volunteers who do not return to their bed will receive an 'Unsatisfactory' demerit on their record, followed by -" static. "Sweet dreams!"

_Almost._ The seconds dragged. Chell clenched her fists.

The carpeted panel beneath her started to rise.

_Wait for it…_

The panel drew level with the bed and started to tilt.

_Now!_

Chell rolled herself off the panel – not onto the bed but off the other side. She landed with an "oof!" onto the floor, and immediately slid beneath the raised panel.

An abyss opened up beneath her.

A deep instinct forced her to reach out and grab a metal pipe before she could plummet. The panel – now above her head – closed.

Chell was out.

Her shabby motel room turned out to be nothing more than a single box in an endlessly vast storage hangar. No walls were visible in any direction – instead, rows upon rows of Relaxation Rooms stretching as far as the eye could see were suspended in the dusty air by great beams.

The bar Chell was dangling from was one of several parallel pipes supporting the underside of the room.

_Let's see… I think I can reach this next one if I swing a bit._ She swung her legs until she was rocking like a pendulum. _Okay. One… two… THREE! _She let go at the peak of her swing – for one endless moment she was flying, unsupported, through the air – then caught the next beam with both hands, holding on for dear life.

_HOLY crap that was cool! It's just like the monkey bars at the playground! Only they can kill me! Alright, let's try the next one…_

She swung from bar to bar until she reached the edge of her room. She looked around again. _This… is… surreal,_ she thought. _Think. How does maintenance access this area? There must be catwalks, or stairs or something._ She looked down._ Aha! The tops of those huge beams supporting the relaxation rooms have handrails! The workers must have used them as walkways – and where there are walkways, there are doors. Doors means stairs, and stairs equal exit!_

Muted through the walls of her old room, the noxious mechanical voice started again. "Due to the continued resistance of the volunteer, Aperture Science's Gaseous Unconsciousness-Inducing Matter will gently force the volunteer into a convenient swoon. Sweet dreams!" The room started hissing.

_Wow. I've actually never heard that recording before. Hm, what is that mysterious hissing noise? Should I be concerned? And what the hell is 'Gaseous Unconsciousness-Inducing Matter'?_

A translucent, pale yellow fog seeped through the cracks of her room. She caught a whiff of it – it smelled like two week old fruit – and her eyes rolled up into her head.

She snapped out of it. _Oh CRAP that's sleeping gas! I literally cannot think of a single worse situation to fall unconscious in!_ She held her breath and frantically looked around. _Yeah, SO WHAT if I ended a sentence with a preposition, Ms. Miller? Now's not the best time to be correcting my grammar! IN! There, see? I did it again. Oh, screw it, I can't hold my breath any longer; I'm just going to jump on top of that room way down there. It's only, what? Fifty feet?_ Chell started swinging._ Let's test out these boots for real!_ She leaped.

_Don'tbreakmylegsdon'tbreakmylegsdon'tbreakmylegs!_ The roof dented, but held when she landed.

She peeked open her eyes. "WHOOOOOOOO ha ha!" she howled. Within a few seconds it echoed back to her. _Oh man, I LOVE these things!_ She clinked the boots together. _I didn't even FEEL that landing!_

She craned her neck upward to see her old room, which was now about fifty feet above her head. The hissing stopped and the yellow fog slowly dissipated. _Nyah! That's the last time YOU make me fall unconscious!_ She paced around on the roof of the room. _Damn, that sleeping gas is strong. One whiff was enough to make me light-headed. And they filled the whole room with it! Well, there's no overkill like Aperture Science.  
><em>

She bounced lightly on the balls of her feet. The long fall boots seemed to work just as well as her old knee replacements, maybe better. A slow smirk grew on her lips as she got an idea; who needed catwalks and stairs when you had _these_ babies?

She leaned over the edge of the room she was standing on. The floor was dark, invisible. But there had to be one, right? Aperture Science hadn't managed to build a _real_ bottomless pit, had they? She backed up a few steps and crouched. She took a deep breath. Another one.

She sprinted and tossed herself off the edge, cheering all the way.


	3. Data Points

**Data Points**

Across hundreds of screens the pale, bespectacled visage of Isaac Kleiner flickered to life. He had uncharacteristically swapped his signature lab coat for a slate button-down shirt; the change was seemingly insignificant, yet for the audience of refugees it was an early, subtle indication that something wasn't right.

It was with a heavy heart the old doctor addressed them. For a brief moment, in fact, there was silence. He stared at the floor with a serious expression. After a few long seconds, in which the only audio from countless televisions and radios was the faint background hiss of static, the scientist shifted in his seat and calmly raised his eyes to the camera.

He cleared his throat. "Ahem. Yes." In a clear voice, he began. "Attention fellow evacuees, survivors, and veterans of the former City 17: this is once again Doctor Isaac Kleiner, formerly of Black Mesa, now stationed at the White Forest resistance outpost. With these bulletins it is my hope to keep you informed through the days to come, which - although tumultuous to say the least - will no doubt form the foundation of the next chapter of human history. We must savor this peace while it lasts, for it would not be unreasonable to assume it will be short-lived.

"First off, I'd like to address the matter of the Combine superportal. As you have no doubt already observed, the mass of dark energy gathering above the ruins of the Citadel has dissipated completely. I would like to immediately quell any and all wild rumors by stating outright that it was, one: the Combine's last-ditch attempt to establish a gateway to their home world, and two: that their attempt was a failure.

"Let me repeat: _we have neutralized the threat_ of a Combine portal. The scientists stationed here at White Forest launched a rocket, which I'm certain many of you observed, into orbit, sending a neutrino pulse through a xenium resonator which in turn -" something off screen caught his eye. He shifted his glasses and said, "Mm, yes? Ah, of course." He returned his attention to the camera. "Technicalities aside, Earth is safe from another superportal. Additionally, intelligence indicates that the Combine's network of communication across the Earth continues to be severely handicapped, granting us precious time to prepare."

He once again grew solemn. His voice suddenly mournful and uncertain, he slowly continued. "Additionally..." Taking a steadying breath, he appeared to be gathering his strength. Like he didn't want to stumble or hesitate over a single word of what he had to say. "It is my sad duty to inform you that a few hours ago, mere minutes after the superportal was annihilated, Doctor Eli Vance was killed. The Combine struck him down as the pinnacle of our victory passed... a solemn reminder that we must not let the windfalls of the past week eclipse all we have sacrificed to gain them.

"With his passing, the resistance has lost one of if not _the_ most dedicated individual ever to stand at our side, a young woman her devoted father... and I a dear, old friend. Doctor Vance was undeniably a singular individual, as many of you can testify." His eyes wavered but his voice remained firm. "He envisioned a world of righted wrongs. One in which we do not deny the past - but also do not let it burden us on the long road ahead.

"And we cannot forget that this was an act of fear. A - desperate act of savagery on the Combine's part because they have finally realized just how far we have come. Their actions are those of a feral animal, clawing at anything within reach as it is cornered. They are trying to make us afraid, trying to force us to revert to the shallow existence of subordination under which we have toiled for so long.

"But I say now and with utmost certainty that _we will not go willingly back into the dark_. Our Malefactors may have burdened us beyond what anyone can bear, but they have been forced to recognize that when united we persevere.

"Tragically, we all have lost ones dear to us due to the Combine occupation, and I regretfully cannot guarantee that there will not be more loss in the future. But what I can promise is that if we strive to make the late Dr. Vance's vision a reality - through cooperation, through sheer stubbornness and will - then a brighter day may yet be within reach. For ourselves, for the next generation, and for the history books which will proudly delineate how humanity acted with dignity in our darkest hours.

"So I say now, as I have before, let us savor peace while it lasts. Mourn our dead, rebuild our homes and lives. But do not forget to look beyond our own borders to our brothers and sisters across the globe following in our wake, rising to their feet to cast off our common enemy while the upper hand is ours." He smiled sadly. "And welcome back to the light."

Over the next couple seconds, the spell was broken. He seemed to diminish back into the familiar, doddering old physicist; his eyes lost their intensity, his posture relaxed. Once again the familiar Dr. Kleiner, he grabbed a pile of papers from off screen and started flipping through them.

"Now, on to more practical matters. For those of you stationed at one of our designated triage areas, please note that Crater 17 is still far too radioactive to approach..."

* * *

><p>After Eli's funeral, Gordon wasn't sure what to do with himself. Barney still hadn't shown up, Alyx disappeared, and the people of the base tried their best to put themselves together after the attack. Dr. Kleiner told Gordon that Dr. Magnusson and himself were working on something which may make flying the helicopter obsolete, and instructed Gordon to be in the garage early the next morning.<p>

He didn't provide any more information than that, so for the first time since the Resonance Cascade, Gordon found himself with nothing to do. And he wasn't sure what to make of that.

Thankfully, Gordon found the people of White Forest surprisingly hospitable. A short, pudgy man simply called Mort had provided him with a change of clothes and shown him where the cafeteria and showers were. He left his hazard suit standing upright and hooked up to a charger in the garage, beside the junk muscle car he'd driven here. A small industrial elevator carried it down to a basement level.

Streams of refugees from the annihilated city were slowly flooding White Forest, so the most Mort could manage to arrange for him was a cot in a janitor's closet. After four straight days of sleep deprivation, Gordon couldn't care less.

He removed his thin-rimmed glasses from his nose and collapsed onto the cot in an old, blue civilian uniform, despite the fact the sun had only just set. Just as he was thinking that rest would be impossible after what he'd been through, he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep. His arm dangled off the side of the cot, still with the glasses held lightly in his fingers. He slept ten hours.

By the time he awoke, it was still dark out and he hadn't moved an inch. Every muscle ached. For the first few moments of incoherency, he believed himself to be back in his old room at the Black Mesa dormitories. Crap, he remembered, he was supposed to call his parents a few days ago - but hopefully he could put if off another day or two.

He had the sense that he had been having a long, horrible, vivid nightmare, but the details eluded him. Not that it mattered. Within a few hours he'd be right back to measuring harmonic frequencies and calculating orbital spins, and later that day he and Barney would laugh at the aging scientists participating in the annual decathlon.

No, wait... the decathlon was yesterday, wasn't it? He could remember hearing the announcer say so when he was taking the transit system to Sector C. He had been in a bad mood because he had turned up late to that huge test on the abnormally pure sample from Xen and -

His eyes snapped open as everything came rushing back. _Shit_. He bolted upright in bed, but the crown of his head cracked against a steel pipe jutting from the wall. Groaning, he rolled from the cot to the floor and accidentally knocked over a forest of mops and brooms. Stumbling to his feet he burst through the closet door. The cavalcade of mops clattered to the floor and rolled into the hall; he glanced left, then right and ran down the hallway to a window at the end.

White Forest. The outpost was dark grey in pre-dawn, but there could be no mistaking it. The wall of the main complex extended far enough along his field of vision for his eyesight to go blurry. He left his glasses in the closet, he realized. Passing down the road were a couple vortigaunts who had their faces upturned to the dark sky; they pointed at the stars and constellations with their strange two-fingered hands. In the distance jutting upward from the dark outline of trees he could identify the radio tower by its twin columns of flashing red lights. Even farther beyond that sat the snow-capped mountain peak that had lead him here.

He leaned his back against the wall and slowly slid to the ground. _This can't really be happening, can it?_ he thought. His thoughts moved sluggishly, unwilling to accept it.

He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands to wake himself up, but only saw ghostlike images in the dark. He saw Mom with her dark hair, "chic" glasses, and warm hands; and his red-headed, stammering Dad. How long would it have taken the portal storms to reach Seattle? Gordon was trying to remember, and failing.

_This..._

He saw himself leaving the test chamber at Black Mesa's Anomalous Materials wing, and seeing the bodies of his coworkers left and right. Dr. Nguyen, Dr. McDonaugh, Dr. Waine.

_Can't..._

Mark, his old friend from grad school he hadn't contacted in a year; the cute girl at the train ticket counter, whose name he kept forgetting to ask; so, so many others. And now Eli was added to the faces, the growing crowd in Gordon's mind who wouldn't disappear.

_Be happening._

He didn't feel sad, just empty. Numb. Thinking clinically, he knew he was probably in denial. Like some part of him believed this was just another note on an experimental report and he was still playing the part of the objective scientist, like everyone and everything he'd lost were just coordinates on a graph, just points of data. He was fairly certain that in a few days he'd _snap_ and break down, but until then he was strangely apathetic. Until then... he was kinda hungry.

He effortfully dragged himself back to his feet and returned to his little closet. He didn't bother changing out of the civilian uniform - or "civvies" as Barney had called them. He only grabbed his glasses from the floor, rubbed his hands together with anticipation, and set out to find some goddamn food.

The past four days, the closest he'd come to a meal was the dry rations he'd scrounged from resistance caches dotted all over the place. Beneath those spray-painted lambda symbols he'd found relief with medkits, batteries for his suit, and packets of dried food. With a quick bite and twenty minutes of shuteye every few hours, he'd been able to perform surprisingly well on surprisingly little.

Once he reached the spacious, half-cylindrical antechamber at the front of the research complex, he stopped. The room was littered with cots and sleeping bags so thickly you could hardly step on the floor. There were - it was difficult to count - maybe fifty refugees taking shelter here, he estimated. Most of them were still asleep, although a few here and there were beginning to stir. Dim, grey morning light slowly seeped through the open concrete blast doors.

Gordon's mood improved a little when he located the doors: an exit! He could make his way to the garage from the outside.

He kept his head low and hoped no one would recognize him. He nearly did a double-take when he overheard someone mention there were people outside handing out breakfast for refugees in front of the research building. Gordon's mind instantly swam with images of hash browns, crispy bacon, buttered toast, and fresh-brewed coffee with _plenty_ of sugar. Ooh, and an omelet bar! But when he arrived at the loose collection of supply stalls on the grass, he was disappointed to discover handouts of - you guessed it - more dry rations.

Oh, well. At least there were bushels of fruit some kind soul had trucked in from the country. It looked like a lot of supplies were coming in, actually; White Forest looked to be well on its way to becoming a hub for refugees. Gordon just grabbed a couple apples - one green and one gold - and made his way to the garage.

It was dim, musty, and cluttered when he arrived. Hardware tools and electronic equipment lined the walls, but the floor was clear for the muscle car at the center.

Gordon brightened when he saw Alyx sitting on the dented bumper. She was staring at the ground with a distant expression, bundled up in an oversized brown jacket. It was old and very simple: something to wear to a train station in a bygone era. She had a small rucksack behind her tucked on the exposed engine.

She looked up at the sound of his footsteps.

"Oh, Gordon!" she said as she briefly looked away in embarrassment and scooted a foot to the side, "I didn't see you come in."

She watched him with a discerning eye as he sat down beside her. Out of that HEV suit and in a standard blue sous-hexa civilian uniform, his form had considerably less bulk. More... lanky, she supposed. His shoulders held a slight slouch to them, which conjured images of thousands of hours bent over textbooks and graphs. Complementing the look were the thin-rimmed glasses perched on the bridge of his nose. In contrast with the dark, clunky pair he usually wore, the proportions of his face seemed slightly off. It was like looking at a twin.

"Wow, Gordon," she said. "Without all that getup on I almost didn't recognize you." A memory struck her and she continued with a slight smirk, "You look just like you did when I first saw you in City 17. Remember when that MetroCop knocked you clean out for a few seconds?"

He rubbed the spot on his head with a grimace. He bit into the half-eaten green apple like a suckling pig and tucked the gold apple under one arm. His hands freed, he responded by gesturing in sign language, (Do not remind me.) He signed slower for her than he normally would; he knew she was out of practice.

"I'm glad you made it on time. I hear you have a habit for showing up late," she teased. Then more seriously she said, "I hate to think what Dr. Mossman must be going through since she went up north. Let's hope whatever Dr. Kleiner and Magnusson are cooking up is worth it."

He nodded thoughtfully as he ate. He offered her the gold one, but she waved it away.

"Not hungry."

He observed her out the corner of his eye, his eyebrows at a slight, concerned angle. (How did you sleep?) he asked in sign. His expression was mournful, as though he already knew the answer.

She fiddled with her thumbs. "Not well," she slowly admitted. She stared at her hands clasped on her knees and confided, so quietly he had to lean forward to hear her, "Honestly, Gordon? I feel like I'm falling apart."

She kept herself under firm control, but he knew how much of an effort it was for her. It hurt to see her like this - spurred by a sudden, deep instinct, he raised his arm and moved to drape it over her shoulders, but something made him freeze in midair. He struggled with indecision, but ultimately crossed his arms across his chest and prayed she didn't notice.

She hadn't. She said thickly, wiping her eyes, "Sorry, um - maybe I'm not the one to talk. Do you..." She kicked at the concrete with the tip of her boot. She said hesitantly, "Do you know what happened to your family?"

The question took him by surprise. He stared hard at the ground. It wasn't one he liked to dwell on. There hadn't really been time for that.

He slowly shook his head.

Alyx shifted closer to him so their sides were an inch from touching. She watched him with growing empathy. He didn't look tired, but there were small lines growing around his eyes, like the serious expression he wore was slowly being etched permanently into his face.

Now that she was taking a closer look at him, she could detect the faint outlines of scars crisscrossing his face and neck. Medkits had grown fresh skin over his wounds to _almost,_ but not quite, the same pale shade as the rest of his face. In good lighting, the lacerations had a just barely visible shade of green to them. The markings would fade within a few days, but still. It was unsettling.

He unpinned his crossed arms to sign, (There was something about E-L-I that made you believe. Thoroughly believe in something you would not dare even consider otherwise.) He looked through the garage door at the buildings scattered across the valley and the wandering refugees. (I think that is how he was able to accomplish all this. No matter how bad things seemed, you listened to him talk and somehow you knew that everything will be okay.)

She could feel tears in her eyes but she was smiling nonetheless. She didn't trust her own voice, so she signed, trying her best with the grammar, (You were pretty close, were not you?)

(He was a friend,) he agreed. Then with a grin, (And the most shameless K-A-R-A-O-K-E performer I have ever seen.)

That made her snort with a small laugh. "Oh, you don't even _know_. It was like he made a sport out of embarrassing me."

(And, A-L-Y-X?) He looked at her pointedly. (Everything _will_ be okay.)

The smile fell from her face; she was unconvinced. With sad eyes, she said, "What makes you so sure?"

It was often difficult to convey tone in sign, so he chuckled to show he was teasing, (The two of us are an unstoppable dynamo. The C-O-M-B-I-N-E had better watch out.)

She laughed and playfully elbowed him in the ribs. "Are you kidding? Nothing's breaking us up."

Gordon smiled at the thought. He felt warm and his heart was beating heavily, like he'd been running.

The mournful mood was now broken, and the two were grinning at each other.

On a whim, Alyx summoned her courage and told him, "You know, when you came in I was thinki-"

"Ms. Vance?" an unfamiliar voice interrupted her, and she abruptly fell silent. "Dr. Freeman?" They turned around to see a tall, sticklike Indian man enter the garage from the back. He wore fairly typical rebel garb - a patched-up coat over khakis, a waist-length protective vest, and a couple ammunition belts - but his frame didn't seem to match it, like he'd been grabbed from head to foot and stretched. His dark skin made his small, nervous smile appear brighter in contrast.

Alyx hopped to her feet and approached him, leaving Gordon lightly bewildered on the car and fiddling with the gold apple in his hand. He noticed she'd left her rucksack on the engine beside him.

"Yeah, we're here," Alyx said to the newcomer.

"I'm Marcus," the man introduced himself as he shook her hand. He had a hooked nose and an untidy mop of dark hair. Despite his height, the way he held himself made him seem like the type of person it would be easy to overlook in a crowd. "Doctor Kleiner asked me to help you find your way downstairs."

"Well that was kind of him, but I have a hunch where to go anyway." As she was speaking, Gordon came up behind her and handed her the rucksack.

"Really?" He glanced at her curiously and hesitantly shook Gordon's hand.

"Room K73?"

Marcus nodded in response, and then she tolerantly shook her head.

"_Of_ course," she said. "That man has a one-track mind, I tell you."

(What is he planning?) Gordon asked her.

She began to speak, but then stopped. She looked at him from beneath her eyelashes and smirked mysteriously. "Well, I guess you'll just have to find out for yourself."

(Tease,) he called her.

"Takes one to know one." She left with a walk which Gordon could only describe as a _flounce_, and waved at him without turning to look at him. "I'm gonna grab something - I'll meet you down there, Gordon!"

He was watching her walk away when his attention was arrested by the guide.

"So: Doctor Freeman. Are you ready to go?" he asked.

Gordon glanced once more after Alyx just in time to see her disappear around a corner, and then gestured forward with one hand to let him lead the way.

Marcus led him from the antechamber, down an elevator, and to one of the basement wings off a missile silo. The walls and floor were mainly metal, like the interior of a freighter. Gordon hadn't been this deep into the research station before, and he suddenly realized the facility was much larger than it appeared from the surface.

Marcus didn't seem to have much to say, so he lead the way downstairs in silence. He occasionally glanced at Gordon, who politely pretended not to notice. He was getting used to people staring at him.

The hallway came to a T; the hall to the right was narrow, very long, and nearly pitch black. Marcus led the way to the left and Gordon started to follow, but something caught his eye that made him stop dead in his tracks and his blood run cold.

The only light down the right hallway was a single fluorescent bulb at the very end, shining directly above a pale man in a blue business suit. He stood unnaturally still, more like a statue than a living thing. He was far at the other end of the black hallway, but Gordon could still discern his features: his reptilian green eyes were focused right back at Gordon, and his lips were set in a small, enigmatic, _satisfied_ smile.

The figure nodded once to Gordon - like a worker greeting a colleague, or a boss acknowledging an employee - and then straightened his tie and disappeared through a door.

Gordon was riveted to the spot in hesitation only a moment longer before he ran after him. The darkness around him was far deeper than a simple unlit hallway. He was sprinting, but the light at the end was approaching far slower than it should. He didn't care in the slightest what Marcus must have been thinking at that moment; Gordon just put on another burst of speed and didn't slow until he finally reached the end.

He approached the door the man in the suit had taken and -

There was a flash of white light that made him recoil, and a pulse through his body that felt like it should have hurt, but didn't. Like he'd been numbed.

When his eyes readjusted he finally saw what the door was: a janitor's closet. A bit like the one he'd slept in last night. He ripped it open and found only ancient cleaning supplies with colorful, Cyrillic labels.

Gordon snarled in frustration and slammed the door shut. He hadn't _really_ expected to catch up to the man in the suit: clearly there were forces much greater than himself at play. But that didn't do anything to extinguish the pit of loathing in his heart.

He would make him pay. For causing the resonance cascade, for killing Eli, for puppeteering Alyx, for forcing Gordon down whatever convoluted path his life was now taking. Nothing comes from nothing - that was the First Law of Thermodynamics, after all. Somehow, one way or another, Gordon swore he'd get his retribution.

But until then...

He shook his head with resignation as he turned around, but was surprised to find the hallway was not remarkable in the slightest. It couldn't have been longer than twenty feet, and was actually fairly well lit.

Gordon wiped his glasses on his shirt in disbelief. What the hell? He was still panting from the sprint, so at least he hadn't imagined _that_... Had he?

"Is everything okay?" Marcus hadn't moved. He was watching Gordon with a concerned expression. Of course he hadn't seen anything; no one ever did.

Gordon was suddenly very aware that he must look insane. He averted his eyes and nodded as he took the few steps back to Marcus. He could sense his guide's nervousness, but walked quickly past him; he could see a pair of white double doors bearing the sign K73.

He stopped in front of them.

It occurred to Gordon, as it had before, that stepping through those doors to see _whatever_ Dr. Kleiner had prepared was exactly what the man in the suit wanted. Maybe a new client had chartered his contract and he was going to be running errands for some extra-dimensional being.

He knew, technically speaking, that he was physically capable of just walking away right now and refusing to participate, but he knew he wasn't going to do that. There was no way he'd just pack up and go, or leave Dr. Mossman to her fate, or abandon his friend the day after her father died. And the man in the suit knew that, too.

God _dammit_.

He glared once more at the wall, and then pushed resolutely through the doors.

He didn't know what he expected to find down there, but he was still surprised to see a near replica of the teleporter he'd seen in Eli's lab at Black Mesa East. The room was small - about the size of a tennis court - but it made good use of the space. Directly across from the door was the teleporter: a circular metal pedestal raised a foot from the ground, a matching circular plate eight feet above it acting as a sort of cap, and four half-rings between them riveted on a vertical spine. It was all blocked off by a retrofitted iron elevator gate with criss-crossing, diamond-shaped gaps.

Computers and exposed machinery branched off from the teleporter on either side like wings. Gordon recognized the backs of Dr. Kleiner and Dr. Magnusson hunched over the hardware, so he succinctly scanned the rest of the room before approaching. The wall on his right was finished with plate metal, with two large, bulky transformers hooked up to an output monitor. They hummed loudly, and occasionally vibrated.

Built into the left wall was a small service lift. Its doors were open, displaying the Mark V hazard suit. It must have been the same lift he'd left it in the day before. On a couch directly beside the doors he'd entered was a short, dark-haired woman whose appearance reminded Gordon of Dr. Nguyen from the old anomalous materials lab. Well, aside from the lit cigarette she held between two fingers. She casually waved as he entered the room.

Dr. Kleiner turned at the sound of the door. "Ah, Gordon!" He typed a few last digits into the computer and turned to greet him with a smile. "I do hope you found a measure of respite since we last saw each other, despite the - erm, rather unfortunate circumstances."

Dr. Magnusson glanced up and brushed his hands across the lapel of his lab coat, but didn't get up from the monitors. "Freeman!" he said. "May I introduce to you the old uni-entanglement teleport prototype. We used this contraption to test the initial Xen relay on a large scale two or three years ago, and decommissioned it once the one you saw at Black Mesa East was up and running."

"We deliberated on using this while you were fighting the striders outside," Kleiner continued for his colleague. "A few hours before his - ahem, shortly before his death, Eli suggested that, as opposed to spending twenty-something hours flying the helicopter to the Arctic, it might prove more prudent to utilize a more _instantaneous_ method. We disregarded the idea at the time, but in light of recent events... Dr. Magnusson and I have spent the night upgrading this old prototype to our current regulations, so everything ought to be in working order now."

Gordon blinked, somewhat dully, at the barrage of information. He habitually patted his pockets for the pen and notepad he usually kept on hand, but of course came up empty. An old familiar nervousness crept over him at the inability to communicate, but -

"Here, Gordon." Dr. Kleiner handed him a pencil and scrap paper from his own lab coat.

Gordon accepted them gratefully. Even though Dr. Kleiner was chronically absent-minded, even though it had been twenty-four years since they'd worked together at Black Mesa, and even though it had been _thirty-four_ years since he'd first become mentor to the stammering 17-year-old at MIT, Dr. Kleiner had somehow managed to remember to bring something for him to write on. Gordon was actually a little touched.

He printed onto the paper in his neat handwriting, _'So we're taking a PORTAL to the Borealis now?'_

"Ah! To the Borealis? No, no, we have no idea into what circumstances you would be landing, now do we? No, you - along with Alyx, Ms. Long, and Mr. Goyal - shall be taking a portal to where _Dr. Mossman_ was last heard from."

Gordon wandered over to a monitor and skimmed the output of data. He gave Dr. Kleiner a look that encouraged him to continue; he knew from personal experience how much his old mentor enjoyed a good lecture.

"Perhaps I should digress," he said. "After Judith and Eli arrived here from the Citadel shortly after your - erm, what's the word?"

"Escapade?" Dr. Magnusson suggested gruffly, without looking up from his work.

"Regardless. Once they were here, Judith then informed us she had acquired a couple of highly classified files from the Combine; heavily encrypted stuff, I can assure you, of which the only immediately useful or discernible data being two words: "Adlivun Electric". Do these words sound familiar to you at all, Gordon?"

Surprisingly, they did ring a bell. Gordon nodded uncertainly.

Kleiner clasped his hands together, satisfied. "As they should. Adlivun Electric was a small electrical company stationed in Greenland, which powered much of the surrounding area via geothermal energy." He smirked as though remembering an inside joke. "I trust certain parts of that description sound suspicious?"

When Gordon didn't respond, Magnusson sighed. "There _is_ no geothermal energy in Greenland, Dr. Freeman," he explained. He stood beside a panel in the machinery. "That story was a cover for the true source of all the energy it was radiating. It was, in fact, a privately-funded research base which investigated _these_." He popped open the panel, revealing an orange Xen crystal the size of a tennis ball hovering inside a glass vacuum tube.

Gordon's eyes widened. He remembered now where he'd heard the name Adlivun Electric; he'd sometimes seen it at the bottom of reports or articles back at Black Mesa. He nodded to show his understanding.

"They had only a fraction of Black Mesa's funding, but occasionally discovered something of use," Magnusson brusquely continued. "But my point is: due to their careful observation of dimensional phenomena they would have kept records of the landing sight of something as abnormal as the Borealis! Dr. Mossman was aware of this and took a small team with her up north to investigate - and unfortunately for us took the much faster helicopter. She arrived there within a matter of hours."

Dr. Kleiner took it from here. "Apparently," he said, "upon investigating the laboratory she discovered the location of the Borealis and sent the coordinates back to us - the transmission of which you and Alyx intercepted upon reentering the Citadel. Erm-" He resettled his glasses on his nose and craned his neck to search over Gordon's shoulder. "Speaking of whom, where is she?"

"She said she'll be here in a few minutes," Marcus responded. He was kneeling beside the couch, next to the smoking woman. "She guessed what you're up to."

"Ha! Of course she did. Well, Gordon, you'll be sent through to Adlivun Electric's portal room once she's returned; my colleague and I have only a couple more tests to run." He looked pointedly at Gordon over the rim of his glasses as he was returning to the machinery. "We don't want another little mishap to occur, do we?"

Dr. Magnusson looked up from the machinery. "In fact, I believe we would be progressing much faster if _someone_ would stop _smoking next to_ _the sensitive equipment!_" he snarled at the woman.

She raised her hands in mock surrender. "Alright, jeez." She took one more drag and stomped on the cigarette beneath the heel of her boot. "Come over here, Dr. Freeman; I know what you're _really _interested in."

Gordon grinned once more at Dr. Kleiner and joined her by the couch at a coffee table, which was laden down with various boxes and crates of ammunition. There were handgun cartridges, shotgun shells, SMG magazines, grenades - everything.

"Hey, no one said this was going to be a relaxing _scouting_ mission, now did they?" she joked. She was short but carried herself confidently; her limp black hair was contained in a long ponytail. Beneath her vest and ammo belts, she was at home in a white-and-copper jumpsuit. "Oh, I'm Sam. Demolitions. Hm..." She scrutinized the grenades with dissatisfaction, twirling a fresh cigarette between calloused fingers. "Tell ya what, I've got something better up top. Go get into your fancy suit thing for now; I'll be back."

As she exited, he obligingly headed over to the left wall, where his HEV suit stood in a small service elevator.

The Mark V hazard suit looked slightly different from how it had in Kleiner's lab a few days before: more... battle-worn, he supposed with the proper term. The numerous cracks and scuffs it had accumulated the past few days had been, for the most part, buffed and patched overnight.

There was a thick black cargo belt slung around the hips, with several bulky pouches for different types of ammunition; Gordon had been meticulously organized in his old life and didn't intend to let the apocalypse stop him. His scratched, red-and-silver crowbar dangled from a loop in the belt on his right side.

The back of the suit was installed with a system of pouches for "necessary research equipment". He put those words in mental quotation marks because he'd only ever used them for military-grade firearms. In the hazard suit, he was able to carry far more than he'd ordinarily be able to; the automated balancing system actually funneled all the weight around the user, so he practically didn't feel any of it. There were four long compartments on his back, open at the top, in which he stored his heavier guns. Going from left shoulder to right, he had them organized as: submachine gun, pulse rifle, shotgun, crossbow. At the small of his back was another compartment, accessible from the sides, which he used for storing grenades; he reasoned that back there they were least likely to get _shot_.

On the front of each of his shoulders was a metal plate concealing a holster. In the right holster, accessible to his left hand, was the USP Match handgun, which he only reverted to in emergencies. His Colt Python revolver, however, was secure in the left shoulder panel within easy reach of his right hand. Gordon patted it with an anticipatory grin. He _loved_ this gun: powerful at short range or long, easy to handle, made him feel like a complete badass...

He quickly caught himself and forced the grin from his face. He wasn't _supposed_ to enjoy fighting, he reminded himself. _He was a goddamn theoretical physicist._ In his old life he hadn't seen that much action in the bedroom, let alone on the battlefield.

_Damn, my life is messed up,_ he thought.

He firmly pressed the circular Lambda symbol at the center of the chest and rotated it counterclockwise three times. When he released, the orange and slate plates down the front rearranged to create an opening large enough to enter.

Once he'd awkwardly stepped into the legs and worked his arms into the sleeves, the plates down the front rearranged to cover his torso and the whole suit automatically adjusted to fit him snugly. He rolled his shoulders, flexed his fingers, tilted his head from side to side: got comfortable. His well-practiced eyes caught the faint, fleeting glimmer of an orange aura fizzle to life around him. This shield had saved his life more time than he cared to count.

A quick duck, and he swiped from the floor the gravity gun. Handling this thing while navigating various sewage canals and war zones had been an adventure all its own, and one he didn't care to repeat. At some point he'd managed to scrounge together a few thick cables into a makeshift shoulder strap for it. It hummed expectantly at his side.

Only one last detail to sort out.

He worked his gloved fingers into a hairline seam in the chest and pried open a postcard-sized panel, revealing a small hollow compartment. There were wires for the suit radio, health monitors, hydraulic balancing system - everything a growing boy needs. Hanging on a hook at the center were a pair of chunky black glasses.

Gordon decided to tuck his thin-rimmed glasses safely onto the same hook so he could wear them later, and shut the panel with a light snap. He didn't intend to wear his battle suit permanently, after all.

The new glasses sat heavily on his ears and he blinked rapidly to adjust his eyesight through the thick plastic lenses. He tapped a small button on the stem behind his ear. A translucent orange screen popped up before his eyes on the lenses displaying general information about his weapons, the power in his armor, and a rough numerical estimate of how close he was to passing out. Those last two numbers were both steady at 100.

By the time he turned away, still resettling the glasses on the bridge of his nose, Alyx was just arriving with her bag on her back and leisurely collapsed onto the sofa.

She admired him decked out once more in his battle gear and whistled, the note low and impressed. "Been keeping all that to yourself, huh?" she said mischievously. She then patted the hacking tool on her belt. "I just needed to grab this thing's charger from the helicopter. Hope I didn't miss anything?"

He knew she'd only missed a little exposition, but he decided to mess with her. As he knelt in front of the coffee table filled with ammo, he signed, (Oh, yeah, you missed _loads_.)

"Really? What happened?"

(Well, I guess you will just have to find out for yourself,) he teased with a pointed look.

"Oh, you _jerk!_" she laughed.

(Takes one to know one.)

He had just finished reloading his numerous firearms when Sam reentered, this time carrying a small crate of grenades.

"Here ya are, Dr. Freeman," she said as she heavily set the crate on the table. There were a dozen or so grenades packed together; they looked to be the same model as the ones Gordon used, but dunked in resistance-orange paint. She selected one off the top and lightly, confidently tossed it in her hand. "The MK3A2 grenades you got are fine in their own right, but these here have just a _daaash_ of Willie Pete mixed in, which means thick white smoke, and fire that sticks to everything and I _mean_ everything, and they'll even burn underwater. Feel free to take as many as ya'd like."

He nodded his thanks as he took some, but she had already moved on to another topic.

"Hey tell me," she leaned forward with excitement etched into her ruddy complexion. "Is it true that you beat a gunship to death with nothing but your _crowbar?_"

He snorted a laugh. Well, he hadn't heard _that_ rumor before. Just as he was about to shake his head no, he saw Alyx over Sam's shoulder. She was listening to the exchange and trying so hard not to laugh it looked like she had bitten into a lemon.

He put on the most smug, confident face he would muster, grabbed the crowbar from his belt, and flexed his arm in a heroic pose.

Alyx burst into laughter on the couch.

Sam, however, didn't notice she had just been the butt of a joke. She turned to Marcus with a triumphant voice. "_Told you!_ Pay up."

Marcus rolled his eyes but reluctantly slid the shotgun along the table to her, selecting the leftover submachine gun for himself.

Alyx was still laughing behind them, but was quickly getting a hold of herself. She signed to Gordon, (You are wicked.)

He winked.

The double doors swung open one last time as a familiar vortigaunt in a long white lab coat entered. "A thousand greetings, Free Man," he said to Gordon as he passed.

Dr. Magnusson looked pleased. "Excellent timing, Uriah, as usual. Preparations are complete!" he called to the room. He then gestured to the prototype just as its gates slid open invitingly. "Dr. Freeman, if you would be so kind."

Gordon took a deep breath and then nodded curtly. He hoped he was effectively hiding his nervousness as he approached the machine.

Dr. Kleiner fussed over his work, muttering to himself. "Let's see: Lagrangian indeterminate, LG orbifold and CY base set for the manifold parameters... Yes, everything seems to be operational. Eh, for the time being, that is."

Gordon looked over Kleiner's shoulder to sneak a peek at the formulas. He was familiar with approximately two-thirds of what he saw, but the rest was near indecipherable. For all his research and careful study back in his old life, technology sure had marched on without him. He somewhat wistfully wished he could just hole up for a month to play catch up: maybe he could learn the technicalities behind all the dark energy he'd been screwing around with lately - it was a subject scientists back in his time knew almost nothing about, yet nowadays it seemed commonplace.

"Ahem." Someone very pointedly cleared their throat. Gordon looked up to see Dr. Magnusson watching him with disinterested eyes. "We're ready when you are, Dr. Freeman," he reminded him.

Gordon spared one last glance at the equations and checked over his equipment once more. Patting the crowbar at his side, he stepped into the narrow circular chamber. The gates clanged shut. The platform raised itself about six feet off the ground and the four half-rings started spinning around him.

"I'll be right behind you, Gordon!" Alyx called.

Thin, pale blue arcs of electricity crackled along every surface inside the teleport, including himself. Machinery in the walls hummed loudly, almost stifling what Kleiner was saying.

"Initializing in three... two... one!" Kleiner pulled a lever to start the final sequence.

The laser canon detracted from the ceiling and emitted a steady, translucent blue beam into the chamber. He immediately felt the effects.

Gordon had teleported twice before - if you didn't count the madness that was the Black Mesa Incident - and neither experience had exactly warmed him up to the concept. The first time, in Kleiner's City 17 lab when Lamarr had jumped in, had felt like being a ping pong ball bouncing from one wall to another. The second time had been at Nova Prospekt when he and Alyx had skipped over an entire week because the teleporter _exploded_ as they left. _That_ had felt like being pushed through a tube of toothpaste. By a steamroller.

This time, thankfully, nothing was going wrong - at least it hadn't _yet_. The sensation was definitely more tame, though it could hardly have been described as pleasant. It was like... every particle in his body was being individually and painlessly electrocuted. He wondered if his hair was standing up. Thick beams of green and teal energy engulfed his entire body.

His vision was nearly obscured, but he caught one last glimpse at the others. Uriah and Dr. Magnusson were observing the progress objectively; Dr. Kleiner did with a hopeful grin. The rebels, Sam and Marcus, were sitting on the sofa with their jaws dropped in astonishment. And Alyx stood at the back, watching with a concerned expression. She noticed him looking at her, smiled a little, and crossed her fingers for good luck.

He did the same: small smile, crossed fingers at his side. Hoped for the best.

Then the universe _snapped_ around him. There was a gut-wrenching tug into nothingness and a flash of pure white. An amorphous vision danced before his eyes: a circular, yellow rip in space, radiating waves of green diffuse. He felt like he was moving very fast, or twisting through a narrow space. Then the circular rip turned orange, the waves around it blue, and then with another flash of white and he was back in the real world.

His ears popped. As his feet landed on solid ground, he gratefully sucked in a deep breath. For a moment everything around him appeared strange, like the colors on a photograph had been reversed, but it soon righted itself. His eyes adjusted to the blinding light which filled the new room.

And _in_ the room was a small battalion of Overwatch troops waiting for him: all of them alert, and all of them aiming their rifles at his chest.

He didn't believe in luck, anyway.


	4. Watch for the Lambda

**Watch for the Lambda**

Chell awoke slowly, as though emerging from a natural sleep – so unlike the groggy jolts which she was accustomed to waking up with in the Relaxation Center. She guessed it was somewhere after the third straight minute of falling she'd come to the conclusion that maybe jumping off the relaxation room hadn't been a good idea. Hitting the ground had been unpleasant, though surprisingly not painful. She'd fallen unconscious immediately, but, you know, you couldn't expect _everything_ to go perfectly.

The first thing she noticed was that she was lying on solid ground. The second thing she noticed was the sharp, steady roar of thirst from her throat. Thirdly, yet most significantly, she noticed that she was still alive.

_How?_ Chell pulled herself to her feet and slowly pivoted in place.

She was at the bottom of the abyss. Endlessly far above her head hung the relaxation rooms, silent and still as graves. It was near pitch black. Her eyes had already adjusted to the dim lighting; a pale, muted glow drifted down through the dust from a ceiling too far away to make out.

Chell glanced down - and immediately did a double-take. _Am I seeing this right?_ She knelt down and strained her eyes. She reached out to brush the ragged edge of her own boot prints embedded in the concrete. Spiderweb cracks branched out from the prints. The Long Fall boots must have automatically balanced her, and channeled all her momentum into the ground.

She just chuckled quietly to herself and shrugged it off. She'd seen weirder things in this place.

And her boots looked fine. A little dusty, but fine. No cracks or warped joints or anything. And speaking of dust, as she idly scratched her head, a thin cloud of the stuff fell from her hair. She brushed her arm and found a paper-thin layer, about a day's worth.

She glanced at her wrist strap. The panel was flashing, "Internal Temperature: 98.1 – Heart Rate: 72 bpm – Blood Pressure: 112/85".

She slid her fingernail all along the wrist strap but couldn't find a seam or a clasp, as though it were one single piece. It didn't appear to be coming off anytime soon, so she dusted herself off, picked a direction at random, and started picking her way through the mess. The wasteland of concrete and rusted girders slowly transformed into a maze of dank corridors and offices. It was after about an hour of aimless wandering that she began to notice a strange, rhythmic thudding from far behind her, like one of those hydraulic pumps she'd come across during her _last_ escape attempt. But the facility was dead. There _weren't_ any generators running.

She decided to ignore the distant sound and keep moving.

Now packaged by the white plaster walls of the administrative complex, she rammed her shoulder against a janitor's closet. It was only after several minutes of accumulating bruises on her arms that she realized the door was not, in fact, locked. Grumbling to herself about plots of revenge and delicious baked goods, she opened the door.

She backed off a little in surprise. _Ah, how charming, another survivor's hovel,_ she noted sarcastically. An abandoned mat waited in the corner next to a slew of empty bean cans. Oh yeah, and every square inch of the walls and ceiling was coated with a red, slanted handwriting. One such insane scribbling said, _'The cake is a lie.'_ Directly beneath it, someone else had written in black, _'And so is the pie.'_

Chell scowled. _Damn kids._

She drank her fill from the water bottles and rifled through the janitor's supplies. Among the ocean of mops, dirty rags, bleach, and all the chlorine toilet bowl disks you could eat, Chell finally selected a sharp pair of scissors. She heavily sat in the janitor's old chair, pinned her arm against the desk, and hovered the scissors half an inch over her wrist strap.

She started the procedure by running the tip of the scissors around the wrist strap, but – again – she couldn't find a seam. She then tried to pry off the small panel, but the scissors couldn't get a hold. She tried pushing the blade under the strap by pressing the tip of the scissors against her skin, but only succeeded in cutting herself.

_Dammit!_ Frustrated and bleeding, Chell started rubbing the edge of the blade against the strap like a saw. It didn't so much as crease the white plastic.

Her hand slowed. _Wait… what if this thing is hooked up to my veins? That would mean that if I rip if off…_ Her mind was flooded with the sudden image of her wrist tearing open, and of her bleeding to death on the janitor's floor. Chell set down the scissors. _Ah, forget it. I should be fine!... Right?_

Scanning the closet for anything useful, Chell selected a map of the facility, a flashlight, and a black pen. With the convoluted map held out in front of her like a tourist guide, the flashlight held aloft in her left hand, and the pen tucked like a chopstick into her ponytail, Chell began to wind through the tunnel-like halls.

And she heard that distant, rhythmic thudding noise again. _Louder_.

She stopped in her tracks, her expression nearly unchanged except for a tiny stiffening of her lips. Without any warning she knelt down and pressed her ear flat against the floor. The sound was clearer this time.

_Footsteps,_ she realized. She closed her eyes to focus. _They're footsteps._ No sooner had she reached the conclusion than she heard another sound layered over the footsteps. It was muffled; all she could determine was that this new sound was a voice: robotic and mechanized. And if she could hear this voice, too, then it was getting closer.

She hopped to her feet and continued along the winding path in the map, though this time her pace was a little faster.

After a while, the rows upon rows of offices finally came to an end. The footsteps continued to grow louder, until they were as easy to ignore as her own heartbeat. That voice, too, could now be heard in thin air, but she still couldn't tell what it was saying. She passed through an empty door frame and the walls disappeared from her either side as she entered into a well-sized room. With a swing of her flashlight, she saw gold carpet and pale wooden paneling on the walls which matched a secretary's desk by an unlit elevator, and red upholstered chairs in little clusters around the edge of the room. It must have been some sort of lobby.

As the beam of her flashlight drifted upward, it struck the crystals of an art deco chandelier, scattering the light into little multicolored shards across every surface and into every corner. Chairs were toppled, loose papers were strewn across the floor, half-drunk cups and purses and wallets sat abandoned where they'd been left. It felt so _empty_.

She let her eyes drift closed; she remembered this place. Once, a long time ago, it had been bright and colorful; the grown-ups were all seated with quiet words and big jokes at the red chairs along the walls, and only the occasional intern with thumping shoes rushed from one end to the other to deliver a message or a cup of coffee. Some peaceful song was piped in from the speakers, and Chell in both the memory and real life started humming along. The trophy case along one wall had shone with gold, ribbons, and plaques, but they'd long clattered to the bottom. Her hand brushed across the glass, leaving a thin film of grey on her fingertips - - she'd only been able to peek over the top of the bottom shelf, she remembered, it had been so long ago. Stony silhouettes had rushed into the room to take her away, and... that was it.

She rubbed her scalp behind her ear; she was getting a damn headache again. Humming louder to smother the memory, she drifted into the center of the space to check the map. It looked like the elevator by the secretary's desk could go up or down: downward to the scientific facilities and testing chambers, or upward to a near-surface parking lot.

At the words, "near-surface," her mind was flooded with the taste of fresh air and the pleasant sting of the sun in her eyes - of cold wind in her face and grass under bare feet. A huge smile spread across her face at the simple thought. In her excitement, she nearly skipped the rest of the way across the lobby to the elevator doors. They were shut, but that didn't even slow her down; she just slammed the edge of her Long Fall boot into the seam, worked the tips of her fingers in as well, and pried the doors apart. The elevator itself wasn't aligned properly: its floor hung halfway up the frame, roughly at the same height as her waist. She quickly clambered inside, and with a few awkward, overly-anticipatory movements, pulled herself through the emergency hatch at the top.

She laughed aloud with relief. Although the shaft extended so far above her head there was no clearly-defined end, there was a distinct grey glow from some unidentified light source. Her laugh echoed back to her.

Her joy didn't last long, however. She checked each of the four walls. Again. And again. With dread causing her heart to sink like a stone, she frantically scanned the elevator shaft with her flashlight as far as she could strain her eyes. In the end, there was just no denying it.

There wasn't a ladder.

A hundred different curse words came to mind as she slowly, ever so slowly, lowered herself back down the emergency hatch and into the lobby. She stood still and expressionless for several long moments, then erupted into a wordless, guttural scream and kicked the secretary's desk over and over until a false-wood panel fell off. She then grabbed a mug from the top - "Today's weather: 100% chance of Science!" - and hurled it across the room at the trophy case, where it smashed through the glass with a _crash_ which was bright and shocking in the empty room.

She stood, panting, with her hands clenched into tight fists of rage at her side. She knew what to do, but she instead glared at the posters strewn across the floor.

_'In the event of rogue AI: 1) stand still, 2) remain calm, 3) scream.'_

She _knew_ what she had to do - it was so obvious, so clear - but she couldn't even describe how much she didn't want to do it. The solution sat patiently in her mind waiting for her to get around to it, but every neuron, every cell, every fiber of her being rejected the notion.

__'Remember! If you see an orange jumpsuit, hit the Red button'__

She shouldn't just sit here wasting time, she thought. That wasn't her. Her mind functioned on what some had compared to a bullet train: barreling forward at an unstoppable pace with no distractions or detours to the side, just point A to point B. She liked to consider her threshold for frustration to be abnormally high, but being forced to go through those damn test chambers she'd reached and surpassed it time and time again. And what had she done? Kept going. A to B. She'd even tasted fresh air, she added with another wave of disappointment.

_'If a futur__e you tries to warn you about this test, DON'T LISTEN!'_

Finally, she forced herself to pivot around on her heel and approach the elevator again. It was still raised halfway up, so there was a big gap underneath the elevator's floor. Chell knelt down and ducked her head into the gap, aiming her flashlight down the shaft. Unlike the view looking upward, this half seemed to swallow what little light there was. The map had said the scientific facilities were down there, which, she knew, would include the portal technology wing.

But what really frightened her more than the possibility of sharp objects in the dark, more than the prospect of never seeing daylight, maybe even more than that homicidal AI herself, was a much quieter fear.

She'd just... she'd just drop down, grab her portal gun, and get out. That simple. She was already formulating a portal configuration which would carry her up the shaft. It would just be that simple, and then she'd finally be free of this place. And everything is going to be just fine. Just fine.

The source of the thudding footsteps finally caught up; its broad shoulders smashed through the empty door frame and it proclaimed in its loud, mechanized voice, "Please assume the party escort submission position," but Chell had already let herself fall into the depths of the facility.

* * *

><p>The air was tepid and stale in the bowels of the facility. Not that she thought she was nearing the lowest part of the facility even after her numerous falls. No, she was getting the impression there <em>was<em> no bottom to Aperture Science, and at some point it melded with the Earth's core to become a single glorious Science-y singularity. Probably good heating down there, she reasoned.

Now that she had something to occupy her attention and there was no trace of those maddening footsteps, her mood had greatly improved. She had never been one to dwell, and as her head cleared of pain she found it easier to think positive thoughts. Like pie, and explosions. Yeah, explosions were nice.

The map lead her out of another, less well-funded lobby into one of the more industrial areas of the testing facility. As soon as she decided to take a shortcut through a 'Maintenance Access Only' door, the walls changed from wallpapered plaster into spartan steel and iron.

Everything was dormant. Chell remembered how she'd wandered among hydraulic pumps after escaping _Her_ pit of fire, but everything back then had been moving, operational. She glanced suspiciously at a security camera, but much to her relief it was off. Or it appeared to be, at least.

She followed the map as best she could, but it wasn't as helpful as she would have liked. It seemed to loop in on itself and give misleading or outright useless information. Regardless, she eventually managed to come to the end of the maintenance areas. She opened a door to a long hallway – saw a flash of bright red – and immediately jumped backward.

"Hello?" a voice intoned.

"Is anyone there?"

_Damn, turrets._ She pulled in a sharp breath through her teeth, and carefully peeked open the door. The hallway was about 100 feet long, maybe a little less. It was poorly lit, save for the orange emergency lighting running on reserve power. The left side of the hall was punctuated by open office cubicles, inside each of which sat an active turret patiently shining its red pointer at the opposite wall.

"Are you still there?"

She considered for a minute whether she wanted a portal gun more, or less than she wanted to avoid being shot. She followed a route on her map which lead her to the most direct route to the portal tech department without backtracking and going around by a mile or two.

Chell smirked as she made her decision. _Well, I've come all this way already._

_First of all: what is the problem?_ She counted up a total of one, two, three, four, five... sixteen active turrets blocking the way. One to each cubicle.

_Second: what do I have at my disposal?_ The hall was for the most part barren, but she merely took that as a challenge. She scanned the floor for anything, the ceiling for imperfections... _Aha._ Protruding through the ceiling panels, she could see a long, wide plastic pipe.

Attached to the pipe above each of the turrets, there were cylindrical component she recognized as the vents that delivered cubes to test chambers. GLa - she shook her head abruptly to crush the thought. _Someone_ had said they were called Vital Apparatus Vents. Years ago, the pipe network must have deposited each of these turrets in the cubicles - probably when _she _was taking over - and just left them.

_Third: how can I use what I have at my disposal to solve the problem?_ According to the map, it didn't take too much backtracking to find the nearest pipe network station. It was just a closet-sized room with a computer console on one side and a pipe going horizontally through one wall to the other. There was a heavy steel hatch in the plastic, with an attached sign: "Do Not Enter Pipe - It Is Boring".

She tucked the map into the waistband of her jumpsuit and crouched into the pipe. It was about four feet in diameter, which meant movement was restricted but not impossible. Crouching strained her back so she settled for crawling, especially as the pipe started slanting upward. The beam from her flashlight reflected irregularly off the curved walls, playing tricks on her.

A hole opened up in the bottom of the pipe; it was a junction, leading to the first of the vents. Through the iris she could see the first in the row of turrets. When she tossed herself onto the iris, it buckled under her weight and she landed lightly on top of the turret.

"Aaaaaaaaaaaah!" it screamed, and then powered down.

_One down, fifteen to go._ Inside the cubicle, she was sheltered from view of the other turrets, though if she stepped out into the hall they'd riddle her with holes. The only way to go was up.

She jumped in place and, with her long fall boots, _just_ managed to reach the edge of the vital apparatus vent. It took a bit of awkward swinging in place to pull herself back up into the pipe, but she eventually managed it. She crawled to the next vent over the adjacent cubicle and repeated the process.

By the time she had taken out her fourth turret in this fashion, she had grown exasperated. _There must be a faster way to do this._

She looked up the vent, sighed, and absent-mindedly kicked the cubicle wall. It wobbled in place, making her grin. _Hmm, these walls are pretty flimsy._ She was suddenly struck by an idea. With a single swift, hard kick, the wall tipped over, knocked into the opposite cubicle's wall, and the whole row came tumbling down one after the other like a line of dominoes.

She couldn't see the turrets in the cubicles, but she could hear them. One at a time as the wall fell on top of them they screamed, clattered to the floor, and fired wildly before finally disengaging.

When the dust settled and the hall grew silent, Chell stepped out into the hall, satisfied with herself. Her eyebrows knitted with confusion when she saw there was still one red beam shining through the dust. This light, however, was flickering.

She approached with caution.

"The answer is beneath us," it said.

She grew concerned; she had never encountered a turret that remained operational after being knocked over. Following the line of its beam, it was partially buried underneath a fallen wall and strewn papers in the cubicle about the third from the end of the hall.

Although she was within sight, it didn't fire. Its beam didn't even shift to look at her.

_Maybe its barrel is jammed_.

"I'm different."

_This has got to be a trick, _Chell considered. She looked up into the corner where a limp, lifeless camera hung.

"She's sleeping."

_I certainly made sure of THAT._ She glanced at the door, her exit, then decided to help it with a groan.

She hauled the toppled wall out of the cubicle and found a stainless steel desk at the back.

"The Rat Man and his Companion are your friends. But they're taking a nap."

With a sweep of her arm, she cleared the floor space beneath the desk. Turning around, she lifted it from the floor. It was significantly lighter than the other turrets she'd carried; maybe it was out of bullets?

She looked at it with disbelief. There was nothing to distinguish it from any other turret, other than its flickering light. And sentience.

"Prometheus stole fire from Zeus as a gift to mankind. For punishment, the gods tied him to a rock and an eagle ate his liver every day."

She nestled the poor thing under the desk. Maybe if it was under here, it would be safe... for a while, at least.

"The Aurora flew North in a flash of light when the blue crossed the triangle."

It paused and looked at her. Abruptly, it suddenly recited:

"_Fish and chips and scars and seeds,_

_Through the rips is where it leads!_

_Seeds and fish and chips and scars,_

_All aboard and to the stars!_

_Scars and seeds and fish and chips,_

_Spoken not on muted lips!_

_Chips and scars and seeds and fish,_

_Awoken now, asleep to wish._"

It fell into silence.

She stared at it blankly. _Well that happened._ After waiting several moments for it to continue, Chell decided it was probably all out of advice and gave it a begrudging pat and set off. Just as she was closing the hall door behind her, it called after her once more.

"Watch for the Lambda!"

* * *

><p>Traveling was relatively straightforward after that. Looking at her map, Chell decided to take a detour through 'The Hall of Not-So-Much Success.' The entrance was a vast mahogany archway that beckoned her down a passageway of countless glass museum cases.<p>

"Hello, Cave Johnson here!" a voice greeted through a thin layer of static, which caused her to jump. "We at Aperture Science Laboratories have had the privilege to spearhead hundreds of inventions over the years."

Chell located the sound: it was the enthusiastic voice of Aperture's old entrepreneur drifting down from the intercom. She was surprised; she hadn't expected anything to still have power in this place. She pressed an ear flat against the wall, and could barely hear a distant vibration.

"And I can almost guarantee your life has been improved by at least six of them!" the intercom continued. "Such as: the Toothpick Twirler™, the Blood Re-Collector™, that thing you're not supposed to know about, and, of course, Hoopy the Shower Curtain Ring™. But with great windfalls come the tests that didn't make it past the International Human Rights clause in our contract." He chuckled nervously. Clearing his throat, he continued, "With that in mind, I'd like to welcome you to The Hall of Not-So-Much Success. Just approach any of the exhibits for more information!"

Within one of the glass cases sat a single navy blue sphere about half the size of a golf ball. Chell pushed a large button on the side of the stand; a small spotlight shone on the case.

"You know that old saying, that if you swallow a piece of gum it stays in your stomach for seven years?" A spotty recording of Mr. Johnson's voice said. "Well, I put my crack team of chemists and biologists to work inventing a gum that, once swallowed, would slowly release all the nutrients your body needs for seven years!

"The main problem," the recording elucidated, "was the acid. Your stomach is filled with it! No matter how many pills we shoved down volunteers' throats, their acid glands would just dissolve them. So to counteract the acid, we needed a base, right? Well why not simply coat the pills with multiple layers of _bleach!_"

There was a brief pause. "The experiment was a failure."

The spotlight faded out. Further down the hallway, one case held nothing more than a few leaves of sheet music. Chell pushed the button.

"Everyone knows that Mozart makes babies smarter," Mr. Johnson's voice started as a small spotlight illuminated the music, "so we hypothesized that if you were to fill a room with infants and play nothing but classical music and opera over the intercom at 300 revolutions per minute, you would raise a roomful of SUPER BABIES!

"Incidentally, if does not. It _does_, however, make them speak incredibly fast and high-pitched when they grow up – which was very convenient for another experiment of ours, trying to answer the age-old question: does the speed at which you speak affect the speed at which your body metabolizes nutrients? Like vitamin A, or cyanide?

"As it turns out… no."

The spotlight faded out and Chell continued down the Hall, passing by numerous questionable displays. As she neared the exit, she decided to take a look at one more. She chose a display at random; the glass case held nothing inside save a doodle of a roaring bear next to a scientist waving their arms. The stand was labeled, "Interpretative Dance as a Means of Inter-Species Communication."

On the recording, Chell heard nothing more than a deep, gut-wrenching _sigh_ from Mr. Johnson. After several long moments, he finally groaned, "Do I _have_ to explain this one?"

Chell chuckled good-naturedly to herself and continued onward.


	5. Uncertainty Principle

**Uncertainty Principle**

"Systems check is clear," Dr. Magnusson declared as he hovered over a data screen.

The teleport prototype was filled with a fading vortex of green and yellow energy. The four half-rings slowed to a halt around the now-empty chamber.

The two scientists were attending to the prototype's convoluted post-transmission processes and safety checks. Uriah stood by the right wall between the two transformers; a green bolt of electricity arced from each hand to a power node. Alyx leaned against the back wall, eyes following every moment of the process. From what she could tell, everything had executed flawlessly: no random jumps, no power surges, no headcrabs... Maybe Gordon's _bad_ luck had finally run out.

"Siphoning the discharge," Dr. Kleiner announced with the flip of a switch. The heat sinks in the walls staggered into silence and the numerous little lights and dials on the consoles turned off. The teleport was once again inactive.

"Success!" Dr. Magnusson proclaimed as he allowed himself a small, self-congratulatory smile. "Not half bad for a contraption jury-rigged in a basement, if I do say so myself."

Alyx approached the machinery, cautious optimism showing in her small smile. "How's the massless field-flux?" she asked.

"Limited!" Kleiner reported with a satisfied readjustment of his glasses. "I expect as of this moment Dr. Freeman is getting his bearings at Adlivun Electric, and - if I may - awaiting your momentary arrival, my dear."

"Then let's not keep him waiting." She gave Dr. Kleiner a brief hug by way of goodbye before stepping into the portal. As the platform raised and the rings circled around her, thin blue crackles of electricity clung to and prickled her skin like static. This was the first half of the transport sequence: scanning and cataloguing every last molecule in her body.

The second half was the tricky part: the actual transmission. Dr. Kleiner had his hand ready on the lever, his eyes glued to the data output. The bulky laser canon descended from the ceiling and began glowing.

"Initializing in three..." Dr. Kleiner looked up from the data to give Alyx an encouraging smile, and then ducked back down to his work. "Two..." White knuckles gripped the lever. "O-"

Out of nowhere, the portal was flooded by an enormous power surge. Alyx only felt her eyes stabbed by a barrage of colorful lights and a dull, forceful slap across her body like hitting water from a height - and the next thing she knew, she was kneeling, disoriented, on the floor of the chamber and familiar voices were shouting around her.

"Abort the sequence!" Kleiner.

"Did you guys _see_ that?!" The tall rebel.

"_Of course we did!_" Magnusson, naturally.

"No, I mean the-"

But he was cut off by, "Crap! What's going on?" from that woman - what was her name again?

Alyx's rubbed her temples and looked around her, blinking as she did so to clear her vision. She was still in the White Forest portal room. The chamber was just lowering to the ground; Sam - yes, that was her name! - was on her feet a few steps away ready to help, while Marcus stood a few paces back, staring at some fixed point in the chamber. Alyx pulled herself to her feet using the wall as a support.

"Are you quite alright, Alyx?" Kleiner asked as the metal grate slid open and she stumbled out.

"Yeah, I'm - I'm fine," she slurred, breath irregular. "What happened?"

"There was some sort of contentious feedback from the receiving portal." Dr. Magnusson hadn't moved from his post beside the computers, and spoke without taking his eyes off the data.

"You mean Adlivun Electric?" she asked.

"Yes. It would appear a large volume of energy - possibly that which we were siphoning into the STC ourselves - was returned right back at us. Unfortunately, reestablishing entanglement with the necessary conjugate pairs will be exceedingly challenging..."

"But which portal's malfunctioning: ours or theirs?"

"Well if we _knew_ that then we wouldn't be having this discussion, now would we?!" he barked.

Dr. Kleiner glared at the back of his colleague's head and said in a gentler tone to her, "Perhaps a fault in the Xen crystal - would you mind taking a look at it, Alyx, while we're occupied?"

"Of course." The power surge had just given her a bit of a shock; she felt back to normal now. She pried open the panel in the wall and started checking over the electronics. Front and center was a glass vacuum tube and suspended at its core was a glowing, orange crystal the size of a human heart.

She scanned its luminescent, faceted surface for scratches or irregularities as it rotated in place, although she desperately hoped it wasn't damaged. Xen crystals were extraordinarily rare; she'd actually stolen this one off a Combine transport a couple days before Gordon arrived in City 17, and Dr. Kleiner had later smuggled it here from his lab. If this one was broken, she wouldn't be able to find a replacement within a hundred miles.

The knots in her shoulders relaxed. It was fine.

They started running a few diagnostic checks, but had only been working a few minutes when something else unexpected happened. A loud, booming _thud_ like a sonic boom was heard, muffled, from far above their heads; the walls and floor vibrated very slightly, the grenades on the coffee table rattling in their crate.

Marcus, who had taken to playing cards with Sam on the couch for lack of anything to do, glanced up. "What was that?" he asked slowly.

"It sounded like it came from the surface," Alyx said. "Maybe a blown transformer?"

Dr. Magnusson huffed with exasperation and growled under his breath about constant delays.

Uriah turned his head upward to face the ceiling. The small eyes crowning his large central one narrowed into red crescents with curiosity. "Increasingly strange developments," he noted. He spoke to no one, in that peculiar tone most vortigaunts had: as though it didn't matter whether anyone heard him or not. "Though not, perhaps, a concern, if its cord is truly severed."

Alyx's eyebrows pressed together as she thought. "Everything looks the way it should," she decided, "and I can't find a fault in the crystal so the problem's probably not in the hardware. For now, I'll check out what that sound was on the surface. Can you guys meet me up there?" she asked the two rebels.

"Sure thing!" Sam stood and cracked her knuckles, happy to be useful.

Alyx grabbed a pair of walkie-talkies off the coffee table and tuned them to the same frequency as she walked over to the scientists. "I'll be back here as soon as I can, but if you hear anything or manage to get it working, _please_ let me know." She set a radio down on a computer beside the teleporter. She knew Dr. Kleiner might forget to contact her, so she directed her request at Dr. Magnusson.

"_Yes_, yes, we know what we're doing," Magnusson muttered without taking his eyes off the data. He said pointedly, "What we need now is to _focus_."

His bluntness usually frustrated her, but now she smothered a grin. Dr. Magnusson never seemed to change. "Alright, alright," she placated him as she moved over to the left wall, "I'll get out of your hair."

As Marcus and Sam headed out the door, the former hesitated and turned his head toward Alyx.

"What did you mean," he asked, "that you would _meet_ us on the surface?"

"I have a shortcut." She stepped into the tiny lift Gordon's hazard suit had occupied, tapped the sole button on the exterior, and dragged the gate shut just as it started clanking upward.

Through the diamond-shaped holes in the grate, she saw Dr. Kleiner look up from his work.

"Best of luck, my dear!" he said.

"Make haste!" Uriah called from the other side of the room. "More good than harm may yet be done."

The portal room disappeared beneath her. The lift was claustrophobic, only barely larger than a coffin; she doubted it could have held more than one person. Rusted supports drooled crimson powder and clanged like a dinner bell, but it seemed to be moving quickly enough.

Alyx's mind raced. Maybe the teleporter malfunction was just a technical error. Maybe something had gone wrong on the other side and Gordon was doing his best to fix it. Maybe it would be repaired in a few minutes and she had nothing to worry about. Maybe it _couldn't_ be fixed and they were wasting their time trying. Maybe it was nothing, maybe it was a trap, or maybe whatever had made that sound over White Forest was no coincidence.

She pinched her temple and tried to get a hold of herself. This was just one small snag. She couldn't afford to get herself worked up over it.

The elevator reached the top level with a pleasant ding. She pulled open the grate to find herself in the garage; there was the junk car she had taken to get here, inert beside a long row of workbenches and tool kits. There were now a few refugees gathered together in groups. They were resting on crates or on the floor, making soft conversation and laughter - even laughter! For the most part they appeared roughed up - a few bore splints or bandages - but lighthearted. Alyx started toward the door at the opposite end, but stopped when she realized her bag was still on her back.

As she shrugged it onto a nearby table, she caught sight of a familiar face.

"I remember you," she directed at one woman in the group. She had time for one question if she made it quick. "You were there when Gordon and I told Barney that the Combine were tailing us. You asked me if I thought we'd make it out okay, right?"

She started speaking in reply, but the man sitting beside her cut her off. "_Damn_, Nat! You met Calhoun, kid Vance, _and_ Dr. Freeman?" He was impressed. "You've been holding out on us."

She shot him a quick glare to make him be quiet then turned back to Alyx. "Yeah, of course I remember. I still can't believe we made it out in one piece."

Alyx grimaced. "That's actually what I wanted to ask you about. Do you know what happened to Barney? He disappeared onto a train and no one's heard from him since."

"No." Her eyes grew regretful. "He got me and a few others to the station, but I hopped the train before his so I don't know which he took. It took me all the way to Klearbruk and I had to hike the rest of the way here. That's all I know."

"But," the man beside her rejoined the conversation, "you really don't want to be anywhere near the trains now; the railroad tracks are swarming with the Combine."

A second man, lounging against the wall, added, "Yeah. I even heard that one of those portal storms knocked down an entire bridge yesterday."

_I might know something about that_, Alyx thought drily, then decided she should be going. She made her thank-yous and hurried out the door. At her pace, it was brisk work making her way through the maze of steel doors, past the window to the auxiliary control room, and into the main part of the complex: a T-shaped, half-cylindrical, concrete Quonset hut which functioned as the main north and south entrances to the base.

As the gathering of displaced refugees awoke, the rows of cots and sleeping bags were being removed as if they had all the time in the world. The air was lively with hopeful conversation; a quick whiff revealed that someone was stewing headcrab. A warm breath danced through her nose and straight to her stomach: headcrab _with figs_. She was beginning to regret she hadn't taken up Gordon's offer for breakfast.

Alyx took a left at the T, but was stopped moments later by a vortigaunt striding through the blast doors.

"The Alyx Vance must follow," he reported in that same gravelly, distorted voice all vortigaunts shared.

"I'm sorry," she said with slight impatience showing in her smile, "but I'm a little busy; I have to find out what that explosion was."

"Then our goals are collinear! Our shared path is northward bound."

"What do you mean? Aren't the transformers at the southern end of the base?"

"Follow, and all will be revealed." Without another word, he continued his purposeful stride to the other end of the half-cylindrical hall. Alyx didn't hesitate long; she understood that sometimes you just needed to run and save the questions for later. Especially when it came to vortigaunts.

Through the northern blast doors, a chain link fence opened up to a green valley fringed by a wall of slate rock on all sides. The destruction from the previous day made itself known the moment you stepped through the door. A few of the aging wooden buildings were in ruins and there were still a couple dead hunters that had yet to be cleared away, but it looked like the outpost was prepared for its new job of processing refugees.

The air was clean and clear, save for a front of dense clouds darkening the northern horizon, which were overtaking the snowy mountain peak. The valley was nearly empty except for a smattering of a few rebels, some directing trucks of supplies, other just wondering what to do. None of them seemed particularly eager to find out what that boom had been - to go seeking out trouble. Like _she_ was.

The vortigaunt led her toward a small red shack on the west perimeter of the valley. When she strained her eyes over the shelf of rock and into the forest, she saw twisting over the canopy a thin pillar of grey smoke.

"The forest?" she wondered aloud, though the vortigaunt didn't respond. He merely led her to the rock wall and began to climb with large, cautious movements.

Alyx was quicker. "So," she panted, working her fingers into the crevices, "do you know what that explosion was?"

"No, for there was none," he responded.

She reached the crest first, so she knelt down to help him up. The forest stretched open before them like an invitation as they jogged past the tree line; they didn't have to go far before they came to a long line of pines, their trunks freshly snapped like toothpicks.

"It was a crash."

There was a long trench carved out of the earth where _whatever_ it was had smashed through the pines and then skidded across the ground before finally crawling to a stop. Pale splinters of wood and bright shards of rock were strewn in every direction, lining the forest floor like confetti.

Her pace was measured as she approached. For a moment, the trees parted and she caught a glimpse of what lay at the heart of the landing site. Her heart stopped.

It was an Advisor pod.

She sprinted toward it, yelling between heavy breaths for the vortigaunt to stay back. She'd never even _heard_ of Advisors until she'd been mentally attacked by one at the Citadel. Then another one in a barn had nearly _killed_ Gordon, and then just yesterday evening two others had flown in to White Forest, pinned her against a wall, taken her father, and - !

She ran faster.

It was only as she was slowing to a stop in front of the pod that she realized she had no idea what she was planning to do. There was a tense knot in her gut of fear and hate. The pod, of the Combine's slick wicked black metal, was shut tight. It was embedded four feet into the soft dirt from its fall, but its ovoid shape was barely taller than herself. If she could, she might be able to shut down its life support system with her hacking tool; if not, she could ask the vortigaunt to -

There was a sudden banging sound from inside the pod, like a fist on a wall. "HELLO?" someone shouted from inside. "ANYONE OUT THERE? WHERE ARE WE?"

Alyx flinched. She recognized that voice. "_Barney?_" she blurted out, loudly enough to be heard through the metal. Sheer surprise cut through her distress, made her smile. "Ha! I don't believe it!"

After a moment's pause, the voice on the inside said, "... Alyx?"

"Yeah! My god, we were starting to think you were dead. Is that really you?"

"_No it's the goddamn Queen of England's ghost_. Let us out, will ya?"

She laughed. That was Barney, all right. Relief made her giddy: no Advisor! The vortigaunt, muscles tense beneath lizard-like skin, approached and was now scrutinizing the pod. "Would you mind?" she asked him.

He closed his large red eye in assent. "Stand back, those inside," he called, his hands glowing green. "This one does not wish you harm." He pressed his palms against the side, creating small arcs of green electricity. With a loud, metallic hissing sound he messily cut a large, irregular hole in the side.

A boot, black and Civil Protection standard, kicked down the cutout like a door without hinges. A head peeked out the hole with a huge goofy smile. "HaHAAH! _Freedom!_"

Alyx leaned into the hole and grabbed him by his elbows to help him climb out. A few more people were stirring inside.

"Barney..." she began to admonish him, but he just sucked in a tight breath of fresh air and held up a finger to silence her. His adjusting eyes blinked at the wide open sky and he heavily, gratefully, stepped back onto solid ground.

"Ooookay, whew!" He took another tense breath and reported, "We got, uhh, four people here, plus me."

"Barney?"

"A few need a medic-"

"_Barney!_" Alyx interrupted. She wasn't sure whether to laugh or shout at him: how the hell had he pulled this off?! "_Do you have any idea what you've hijacked?_"

His eyes maintained disinterest but his brows raised. He looked at Alyx. Then the pod. Then her again. He deadpanned, "A bad thing?"

She buried her face in a hand, shook her head, and just laughed. "It's just... Just take it from me that what's normally in those things is something you do _not_ want to come across."

He nodded, "Yeah, I'm starting to get that feeling." Back to business, he said, "Of the refugees you, Gordon, and I evacuated from City 17, I held on to who I could." The four other passengers stumbled out one at a time: two of them supported a short unconscious man on their shoulders, while a red-haired woman clutched her bleeding head behind them.

Alyx watched them exit. "_I'll_ say," she agreed. "Looks like you've been through the wringer."

"A further mystery." The vortigaunt surprised them by speaking again. He watched each of the passengers shamble out of the forest toward the research complex and his feet inched into a battle stance. "The vortal form has lost its integrity, yet a shard endures. The question persists: in what?"

Alyx faced him. Her eyes narrowed with curiosity. "What are you -"

But before she could finish her question, he cupped his hands around his mouth, faced some point off in the distance, and let out a strange, warbling, alien yell. An answering call echoed from far away.

He spoke once more in English to Alyx. "There is much to discuss, though not at the moment. We shall convene here again later." Then without another word he ran off toward the source of the answering call.

Alyx shook her head as she watched him go. "I swear, the vortigaunts are only getting _more_ enigmatic," she said with some amusement.

Barney was disinterested. "Hey, they're frickin' _aliens,_ right? S'to be expected." He rubbed his ear and his hand came back bloody. He didn't seem worried. "Hey, you don't happen to know where I might find a medkit, do ya? And maybe a pair of tweezers, too; feels like there's some shrapnel in here."

She was surprised and a little concerned at how casual he sounded. She tugged his arm to get him to start walking to the main complex. "There's a clinic back at the base. That is," she added, only half-teasing, "if you don't keel over before we get there."

As they walked, she inspected him out the corner of her eye. He looked even more battle-worn than he had in the city. His hair was matted with sweat, blood, and... what was that, ashes? Deep purple bags were carved under his eyes; a dark stream of drying blood dribbled from his ear down his jaw and neck. His face was coated in a thin layer of grime - and he _still_ hadn't shaved.

"You look like _shit_, Barney." She shook her head with a mixture of amusement and concern, like a mother with an unruly child. Somehow Barney always managed to get the short end of the stick.

"Gee, _thanks_." He rolled his eyes and shoved his hands into his pockets as he walked. "I was just about to say the same about you: you look dead tired, Alyx. Real sunshine and rainbows."

The smile dissolved off her face. She didn't really intend what happened next; one moment she was stepping over a fallen tree, and then the next, the words were standing bare in the forest.

"My dad died."

Barney froze. For several seconds he just stared straight ahead. Didn't react. Didn't say a thing. Then his eyes flickered to her face as though to check if she was joking. When he registered her expression, he hung his head. Ran a hand through his hair.

He sighed. "... _Jesus_. I'm sorry, really." He looked back up at her. "How you doing, kiddo?"

She kept walking toward the base and motioned for him to follow. She wanted to sound okay without outright lying, so she decided on saying, "I'll be fine." She didn't want to have the whole 'talk out your feelings' conversation - especially not with someone like Barney, who had all the subtlety and social grace of a rampaging triceratops. She changed the topic to the first thing that popped into her head. "Stupid question: but doesn't that hurt?"

"Nah," he shrugged. He understood the conversation shift. "Adrenaline's still kicking in pretty good. Gotta say, that soft landing was pretty sweet; didn't expect that."

Was he being sarcastic? She gestured back at the muddy trench the pod had carved, lined with shattered hundred-year-old conifers. "'Soft landing'? You _do_ know you crashed, right? Didn't you feel a little impact at one point or another?"

He eyed the trench suspiciously as they emerged from the forest. They stood at the edge of the shelf looking over the brightly-lit valley. "You kidding? I didn't even know we'd stopped flying until you started yelling at us from the outside."

That took her by surprise. "You didn't notice the landing at _all?_" She considered for a moment, glad for something new to occupy her thoughts. "Then apparently Advisor pods have inertial dampers. Maybe it's related to zero-point energy manipulation..." She trailed off, thinking. She nimbly clambered down the crevices in the stone until she landed neatly on the grass.

Barney just snorted and shook his head. "You've spent too much time with the Doc," he said. "You're starting to sound like him." He regarded the climb down with dull dissatisfaction, and then simply lowered himself onto the ground and let himself half-slide, half-fall the ten feet to the valley floor.

"Very graceful," Alyx remarked, helping him up. "Which one, Dr. Kleiner?" she asked for clarification, only half listening. She decided to examine the pod when she got the chance: could prove interesting. "I know a lot of doctors."

"_Gordon_. Speaking of, where'd that asshole get to? Busy saving the world again, right?" He glanced at Alyx with a smirk, but it was replaced by a look of horror when he saw her dejected expression. "_Oh fuck he's not dead too is he?!_"

She quickly pacified, "No, no, he's not-" but then stopped short when she realized she had no way of knowing one way or the other. Holding the side of her face she groaned, "Oh god, I hope not."

Alyx knew she still hadn't answered Barney, but worry was threatening to be replaced by panic. It had been - what, half an hour since the prototype malfunctioned? A lot could happen in thirty minutes, she knew from personal experience.

She unclipped the radio from her belt and asked, holding down the button, "_Please_ tell me you have good news."

There was a couple seconds' silence in which Barney shot her a confused, impatient glance. She raised her index finger to tell him to wait.

"We have made no progress, I'm afraid." Amid a flurry of static was Dr. Kleiner's disappointed voice. "We've done little more than determine what the problem is _not_, but that hardly ameliorates matters." His link fell quiet, but then he returned with renewed vigor. "I'm certain we'll get it, though! It's only a matter of time."

"I wish I shared your optimism, Dr. Kleiner." She smiled, but the expression was limp and fell away. "It's time that we _need_. Be sure to keep me posted."

"SO!" Barney barely waited for her thumb to release the button before interjecting. He may have been exhausted, but his eyes were wide awake and growing frustrated. "_Care to tell me what's going on?_"

She ran the palms of her hands down her face and took a deep breath. "I just needed to check in on them. Okay, so..." She wondered where she should start; it was a bit of a complicated story. "So just after we launched the rocket, we thought everything would be fine."

He stared at her with a dry, blank expression. "_Rocket,_" he repeated slowly.

"You _did_ see the huge rocket yesterday, right? Haven't you noticed the superstorm above the Citadel is gone?"

He admired the sky. "Yeah, I _did_ notice the sky looked a lot less 'eye of Sauron' today. But I guess I missed the rocket; I've been a little... _occupied_."

"Actually, that's a good point: just what the hell _have_ you been up to the past day, Barney? No one's heard a word from you."

"_Nope._ You first, kiddo." He crossed his arms, adamant.

She pinched the bridge of her nose. "Well, it's not exactly straightforward. Basically Gordon took a teleport prototype to an abandoned arctic laboratory to follow Dr. Mossman who was searching for an Aperture Science research vessel that disappeared back in the 1970's."

Barney just stared at her, speechless.

They had reached the northern chain link fence, where the forms of Sam and Marcus approached from the main complex. Sam's eyes flickered between the pillar of smoke above the forest and Barney's filthy, wounded face.

"I get the feeling we missed something," she said, eyebrows raised.

"No, _I've_ missed something," Barney returned with a sidelong glance at Alyx.

Thinking about Judith had given Alyx an idea. "Tell you what," she declared, turning to the two rebels, "can you get Calhoun here to the clinic? And a history lesson?" She glanced at Barney then back to them with a raised eyebrow. "And a shower?"

"I take offense to that last one," he said, but moved over to join the two anyway.

"I'll catch up with you all later!" she called as she began jogging down the left side of the building.

Barney flicked a wave. "See ya when I see ya."

As the other three headed back into the main base, Alyx ran around to the south side of the building. Up to now, she'd been working under the assumption that there was no way of getting into contact with Gordon, but now she realized that wasn't necessarily true. She remembered how Judith had sent a transmission packet from Adlivun Electric by concealing the information in a carrier wave. Well, there was a shortwave radio built into the hazard suit. If she could just get her hands on a radio antenna, she could send a recording - but it would have to be one hell of a powerful broadcast to be able to reach it from so far away.

Good thing White Forest _just so happened_ to be equipped with a radio tower, she thought.

The station was just a few paces off the research complex's southern wall. The building itself was tiny, around the size of a large shed, but the radio antenna was enormous: it was supported on a huge concrete platform and its topmost red lights towered several times taller than the trees. There were two attendants playing cards inside the station, one much older than the other.

The younger man was reclining back in a chair. "Hey, you're Vance's kid, right?" he asked as she entered.

"_Was_," she corrected him. She was surprised, and a little pleased, at how calm she sounded. "I need to send a message on loop," she said. "Can you do that?"

His eyes widened. "Uhh - yeah, sure." He shuffled out of his chair and hastily started clearing trash off the console. He pointed to himself, then to his friend. "Scott, Ross." He jerked his head in the direction of a small TV in the corner, which was displaying Dr. Kleiner's latest bulletin on loop, muted. "If you want it on TV, though, you'll have to check with the Doc first."

"No, radio." It occurred to her that if Gordon really was in trouble, then his suit radio suddenly going off might get him into a whole lot more. After a moment's deliberation, she instructed them to broadcast on a station half a wavelength off of the hazard suit's receiver. That way, it would cause interference for him to investigate in a safe location, but wouldn't alert anyone within earshot.

"Just say your message into here and we'll put it up for you," the older attendant, Ross, said with an offhand gesture to the microphone.

"Thanks." She thought of what to say, then tapped a red button.

"Gordon - wait, do I hold the button down or just push it once?" she muttered to the side. The younger one, Scott, gave her a thumbs-up. She laughed nervously. "Okay, great. Gordon: we're not sure what happened with the prototype, but we're trying to figure it out as fast as we can. Unfortunately, the way things are going now we're going to have to take the helicopter like we originally planned, which means it'll take us an entire day to get up there. Just - _please_, do what you can to help Dr. Mossman, and try to get into contact with me. I'm sure _you'll_ find a way. And... take care of yourself."

She clicked the button once more and the red light flickered off. "If you could just put that on loop for a while, that would be great."

"Yeah, sure thing," Ross agreed. He lightly chuckled. "Ma'am, I gotta say that makes zero sense when you hear it out of context."

She almost laughed, too. "I suppose you're right. Thank you both again, so much." She disappeared out the door.

Once he was certain she was out of earshot, Ross turned to Scott and said, jerking a thumb the way she'd gone, "So, you think her and Dr. Freeman...?"

Scott scoffed. "Who, Alyx? Nah... Although," he reconsidered. "... _Naaah_."

Ross rolled his eyes. "Oh yeah? What makes you so sure?" He started dealing cards between them.

" 'Cuz the world can_not_ be that cruel to us normal guys."

A small console on the back wall started beeping.

Scott looked up from his cards. "What's that?" he asked. "Doesn't sound like an incoming transmission."

Ross looked at the blinking console, his lips set in a small frown for his interrupted game. "Sounds like a sentry spotted something," he grumbled. With a sigh, he peeled himself off his chair and waddled over to it. He had a terrible hand, anyway. "Yeah, see, the southeast sentry spotted a couple scanner bots dropping hopper mines here and there. It's plum annoying, that's what it is, but nothing to get your panties in a..." He trailed off and froze, still staring at the beeping console.

Scott watched him with growing alarm. "... Ross? Hey, Ross? What's-" but he didn't have time to finish before the older man ran out the door after Alyx.

"Vance!" he shouted, his voice growing dimmer with distance. "KID! You need to see something!"

Scott slowly set down his cards with shock. Even during the Uprising, he'd never known Ross to actually _run_. He cautiously approached the console, which was blinking more and more rapidly. His jaw dropped.

Every single sentry stationed around White Forest was sending in rushed reports of scanners, hunters, striders, dropships, and gunships - all converging for a massive attack on the base.

"Well _fuck._"

* * *

><p><em>[Author's Note: You don't have to read this next section if you don't want to. Personally I found it interesting, but if you don't then just skip.]<em>

**The Vortessence and You!**

_- From the desk of Dr. Avon Kosmatka, Xenobiologist, circa 2029 -_

I have been speaking with the vortigaunts. They are a reclusive species, prone to secrecy, but I do not think this is a basis for mistrust, as many of my fellow humans do. They speak often of something called 'the Vortessence,' but never elaborate. Somehow, I managed to convince a three or four of them to participate in an interview. I spoke with them for hours and spent many more attempting to interpret my notes, but I finally think this article is as accurate as I can make it.

They spoke of the Vortessence as a sea. They draw from it what I speculate could be stated as _energy_. Remember that subatomic particles are just iterations of energy, identifying itself in various ways. The Vortessence, then, could be thought of as a reservoir of energy that has yet to take a form. If you managed to access it, you could, potentially, tap as much as you want for millennia, until our universe dies. What is the lifespan of a universe compared to the Vortessence?

The vortigaunts then spoke of another force, equal and opposite to the Vortessence. One they refused to name. For the sake of this article, I will call it the Omega. If we are imagining the Vortessence as a sea, then we could say the Omega is the air: another vast reservoir, of different properties, never mixing but in perpetual contact with the Vortessence. And it is where these two come into contact that they react, in cataclysmic displays of heat and color. These reactions form - well, everything. Electrons. Positrons. Neutrons. Photons. When the Vortessence and the Omega touch, even briefly, entire universes are born... at least, according to the vortigaunt mythos.

As I understand it, some points in space are closer to the Vortessence than the Omega, and others the opposite. (Note: I do not know where Earth lies on this spectrum.) I do know, however, that in the far reaches of space there happened to be a planet near-adjacent to the Vortessence, one capable of sustaining life. Over hundreds of millions of years this planet stewed in vortal energies - long enough for the native life to evolve around it. Nearly every species was in some way influenced, though none so much as the sentient beings. This was the vortigaunt home world.

Vortigaunts are genetically wired as conduits, or focal points, of vortal energy. Through practice and focus, a vortigaunt can open themselves up to the Vortessence, let the energy flow through their hands, and channel and release it as a sudden burst or constant stream of energy. In this way, vortigaunts are skilled at hand-to-hand electrocution combat, and can additionally power electrical devices single-handedly with no obvious generator.

Although every vortigaunt is a unique individual, the entire species' subconscious is connected along a convoluted network of vortal threads. Intense focus, heightened state of mind (elaborated upon later), or death will result in a rapid output of information along these threads to all other vortigaunts. This ability to instantaneously share information makes them invaluable for long-distance communication and espionage. It also creates a sort of unconscious uplink which may, to other species, appear to function the same as a hive mind.

Antlions also evolved on the vortigaunt home world. The result of their evolution in the ambient vortal energy is significant, yet more subtle than that of the vortigaunts. The amniotic fluid present in antlion eggs and larva can absorb tremendous amounts of vortal energy, which slowly dissipates over their life cycle. The small clusters of glowing yellow eggs are so brimming with unfocused vortal energy that they are capable of shockingly rapid mutations as is most beneficial to the hive.

A fortunate side effect of these rapid mutations is the eggs' ability to bond with the DNA of any species, no matter how alien, and heal damaged tissue almost automatically. It is due to this evolutionary quirk that Black Mesa scientists were able to process antlion eggs from Xen and refine and manufacture the active chemicals as medkits.

A less fortunate side effect is that occasionally these mutations pass on to the adult life cycle. The results vary widely all the way from gigantic armored antlion guards to moderately-sized acid-spitting drones. Aside from the default worker drone breed, there have been 33 formally identified mutations along with several hundred sub-breeds and sub-classes that are difficult to document. An average vortigaunt can identify all 33 main mutations along with many of the sub-breeds, although true mastery is saved for the vortigaunts who devote their life to the craft of antlion herding.

The clusters of small yellow eggs that survive the first stage of life mature into off-white larvae roughly the size of a softball. Worker drones move these eggs from the outlying tunnels to the central hive for its heightened security and moderated environment. At this stage in its life, the vortal energy in the amniotic fluid is still significant, but has dissipated to the point that they are an inefficient raw material for medkits.

However, it is at this stage in life that the larva are most useful to the vortigaunts. The larva is so prized, in fact, that it is commonly sourced as the main goal of antlion herding, much the same as how human cultures would keep goats for milk or poultry for eggs. Due to some genetic quirk, coupled with thousands of years of selective breeding, the vortal energies absorbed by the amniotic fluid is at its most compatible with vortigaunt biochemistry when the antlion is in its larval state.

When a vortigaunt is exposed to a crushed larva, the fluid is absorbed through the skin and is transported to the brain nearly instantly. The chemical bears the unique property of temporarily tearing down a vortigaunt's mental blocks when it comes to accessing the Vortessence, and allows him greater, fully conscious control over what is otherwise a limited, subconscious process.

A solitary vortigaunt exposed to larval extract is capable of harnessing unprecedented levels of power, but control over said power is limited to one's mental capacities. If control cannot be maintained over the sudden onslaught of power, it may result in an explosion of energy that not only endangers whatever beings or equipment may be nearby, but also obliterates the vortigaunt from existence down to the very last molecule. Loss of control is always fatal.

The ritual is far less unstable when not undertaken alone. When multiple vortigaunts expose themselves to the larval extract simultaneously, their mental connections across the network of vortal threads is heightened, creating a solitary consensus between minds. For each additional vortigaunt present in the joining, their control and potential power is increased exponentially, eventually granting them the seemingly miraculous ability to generate force from nothing, heal the injured, remotely move objects or people, and many more phenomena yet to be identified. Some have speculated they may even be able to manipulate vortal connections.

As a result of all of the above, vortigaunts maintained societal structures which were convoluted to say the least. Although they had technologically advanced only to agrarian-level civilizations, the Combine recognized their usefulness as shock troops and devastated their home world, irreparably demolishing the culture. Now scattered as slaves throughout the Combine Empire, their main centers of free civilization are stationed on resistance-occupied regions of Earth and assumedly Xen, although there has been no communication with the Xenian branch since the resonance cascade.

Reportedly, the majority of vortigaunts hold the belief that all life is connected to the Vortessence or the Omega, and that any sentient being is capable of consciously accessing it through focused study. This statement has piqued the interest of human scientists, but vortigaunts refuse to elaborate on the topic. Regardless, to date there have been no formal accounts of _any_ species (human or otherwise) aside from vortigaunts having access to the Vortessence.

They would not tell me more.


	6. An Unexpected Party

**An Unexpected Party**

Chell barely recognized Aperture Science. She was so accustomed to its characteristic noise and insanity that now, picking her way through the dim light and stony silence, she got the strange feeling she was walking through the skeleton of a beached whale. The physical construct of the beast enveloped her, but it was definitely dead. Memories of the facility from when she was a kid were shattered and hazy, but she tended to associate them with alarm bells.

Her head hurt.

She rubbed the spot she could feel the headache coming on and returned her attention to the map. It was no use. _H__owever_ long it had been since she'd been dragged into the Relaxation Center, the facility had had plenty of time to fall into ruin. Rubble from collapsed walls and ceiling cluttered the floor or blocked the way as massive mounds of plaster and concrete. Which was all well and good, if you were a fan of the 'decrepit ruin' style of interior decorating. Not her first pick, but to each their own.

She could tell she was still just a few floors above the portal wing, but as she got closer and closer it was increasingly difficult to find a working stairwell. With these boots, even another empty elevator shaft would do, but those were either blocked or missing entirely.

Getting frustrated, she eventually managed to push her way through a heavy, rusted iron door to a catwalk. The cool emptiness of a vast room greeted her, like the first chilly steps into an underground cavern. The air tasted stale; this place had been abandoned so long there wasn't even dust in the air. Her feet kicked up little white clouds of it where she stood. She sneezed.

Wiping her hand on her overalls, her gaze scanned over the new arena. The catwalk overlooked a dead drop into an Enrichment Sphere far below. After only a moment's hesitation, she smiled to herself and casually stepped off the gantry as calmly as stepping off a curb onto a road - slicing through the air, bursting through the asbestos insulation of the sphere, and finally landing lightly on her feet.

A dim spotlight poured through the hole she'd made in the ceiling. She'd landed in some sort of testing platform; it didn't offer much in the way of illumination, but to her dark-adjusted eyes it was more than enough. Shaking the shards of debris from her head with a sigh, she resigned herself to never getting a good shower. There was some sort of faint, vaguely medicinal scent in the room that made the hairs at the nape of her neck stand up and the sting of bile rise in the back of her throat. She casually leaned over the edge, and then immediately, instinctively leaped back with fear. The entire floor was flooded with that same brown, oily sludge GLaDOS had drenched the testing rooms with.

Chell grimaced as a brief, but powerful, memory passed before her eyes: clipping the wall mid-jump from poor portal placement, falling twenty feet onto her back, slamming heavily onto the floor a mere foot from the edge of the brown sludge, the back of her hand brushing the surface of the liquid, and the hot splinters of agony that immediately shot through the nerves of her hand and arm. How she curled up in the corner facing the wall and biting her tongue because there was no way - no. fucking. _way!_ - she was going to give Her the satisfaction of seeing her in pain.

She pensively brushed the skin on the back of her hand. The chemical had only burned her two littlest knuckles and a bit of her pinkie, but even now, who-knows-how-many years later, the skin was the tiniest bit darker and rougher than the rest. Chell shook her head to return to the present; the memory was bringing back her headache. If she'd known the sludge was in the Enrichment Sphere, she never would have dropped in here. Maybe she shouldn't be so casual about jumping into random abysses, she thought.

She scrutinized the room around her. Platforms loomed on either side of her like trees, each one an isolated island dotted across the chamber. They were all different heights and simply put together: a linoleum platform supported by a column of intersecting steel girders. The closest one was a mere five feet away _horizontally_ speaking, but so far down that the sludge was lapping at its perimeter. The next closest was twice as tall as her own, twenty feet away and beside the back wall.

Chell pursed her lips. _Well... now what?_

"Hello?" As though in answer to her question, a distant voice broke the silence.

Chell froze stock-still, her heart pounding loudly in her chest. _I thought this place was abandoned!_ What if it was some agent of Her, come to drag her back? What if there were more turrets, blocking the only exit to this sphere? It only took a second for her survival instinct to tackle past her hypotheticals like a linebacker and get her moving again. Move first, ask later.

"You know, if anyone's there? And you might consider maybe helping me out? Then yeah, that would be _super_," the voice continued. Muffled over the distance, the voice was moderately high-pitched and androgynous.

Chell balked. Turrets weren't normally so articulate. Or used the word 'super', for that matter.

She focused more closely on triangulating the source of the voice. She was fairly certain it had come from the opposite side of the sphere. Squinting her eyes in that direction, she noticed a cone of flickering yellow light was coming from the top of another one of the islands; this one was right up against the wall and its network of girders was painted a rotting blue color. And, to her appreciation, the yellow light was illuminating a metallic arch.

_The exit._

She hadn't come to any conclusion about the strange voice, but she needed to get out of here like it was one of the fundamental laws of her existence: _keep moving._

Chell stood in the exact same spot at the center of her platform, and slowly turned in place, her eyes wide to absorb every inch of her environment they could. When she did this - exercised her talent like flexing a hardened muscle - the louder aspects of her personality melted away. To an outsider, she would have appeared blank and expressionless like she was daydreaming. In fact, it was the exact opposite. A part of her brain, the problem-solving part which had already been strong enough when she was born and subsequently trained and refined for _years,_ was now acting in full force.

She didn't see the platforms or columns of girders. The spine-tingling scent of sludge still drifting upward from the sphere's basin no longer registered with her. The walls, the floor, the ceiling, the light sources, that mysterious new voice, and a colorful myriad of every other thought and worry drifting through her mind faded into nothing. She only saw a _problem._

And it needed to be _fixed_.

She had made two whole revolutions in place before she, without any external warning, sprang into action. In one solid motion she strode once, twice off the platform and arced neatly through the air. Her eyes closed only briefly to savor the rush of wind across her body before she _slammed_ feet-first onto one of the girders of the nearby platform. Loping upward arm-over-arm, she climbed.

The voice must have heard her, because it called, "Was that you? Oh, that's wonderful, wonderful, _wonderful!_ You were quiet so long, I was beginning to think you were ignoring me or - uh, _ahem_, that's not the point. Please, please, please come over and help me, if you can!"

By the time this little speech was over, Chell had reached the top and pulled herself up onto the platform. She sprawled out on her back, panting, with her legs dangling off the edge at the knees. She wasn't looking forward to being sore tomorrow; her limbs _burned_. After her moment of respite, she pushed herself back to her feet and shook the lactic acid from her arms.

From her heightened vantage point, she could see the testing chamber much clearer. There was the platform she'd landed on, directly beneath the little O in the insulated ceiling with its beam of pale light still slipping through at an angle to hit the wall. And over _there_, away and beneath her, was the exit. There was some pile of rubble by the arch in the wall, and the yellow light she'd noticed earlier was beaming in shards through cracks in the debris. The platform, unlike the rest, was balanced cleanly on a column of blue-painted girders, and -

_Oooh,_ she thought as something caught her eye she hadn't noticed before. _That could work._

Without further ado, she turned on her heel and threw herself, lightly this time, off the edge of the platform in the exact opposite direction of the exit. This drop was over faster than the other one; her boots made shallow _clinks_ as they landed on the metal rebar in the wall. The interior of the sphere seemed to be supported by a scaffolding of rebar, welded into triangles. What was the word, tetrahedron? She didn't think that was right, but whatever the word for a sphere made out of hundreds of little triangles was. Of course, 'little' was relative; each triangle was taller than she was. The rebar made convenient climbing work, and soon she was hanging directly over the exit platform.

One more drop, aaand - _thud_, she was back on solid ground.

"_Aagh!_ Oh - oh my, that was you, wasn't it?"

Chell had been under the impression that whoever needed her help would be beyond the exit archway, but to her mild confusion, the voice was coming from within the pile of rubble by the door.

She approached prepared for the worst, the shattered yellow light splaying across her face and overalls.

The voice laughed from within the pile of broken plaster and warped rebar: a relieved, genuine sound, like it had been under a lot of tension for a long time. "Ohh, you have _no_ idea how long I've been just _sitting_ here - _ugh_ it's been dreadful, perfectly dreadful. In fact, even _I'm_ not sure just how long it's been - sleep mode and all - but I get the feeling it's been a pretty gosh-darned long time."

Chell grabbed a piece of rebar and heaved. Didn't budge. She chucked away a few slabs of plaster and tried again. This time, a section of the rubble pile fell away like taking a rock from the bottom of a sandcastle. The rusted metal threatened to dig into her hands, but she just leaned back with all her might until the rat's nest of plaster, bricks, and insulation dragged away with the rebar.

The yellow light shone at her, undisturbed through the new gap.

_**?**_

Normally she'd have been more articulate, but when she saw what sat at the center of the pile, chattering away with its androgynous voice and merrily shining its yellow light, the only thing that went through her mind was a single, bolded, question mark. _What?_

It was a soccer ball. No, it was a giant cue ball. _No,_ it was...

"Ah _hello_, my darling, my savoir!" the sphere laughed, its yellow light strong and steady. The voice was bubbly and flirtatious: much less tense than when it had been asking for help. "Here I was, minding my own business, when all of a sudden you just crash through the ceiling! And I'm sure it would have been quite a show, too, if I'd been able to see it."

It was not human, that much was obvious.

At last, her brain came up with a near-match: it looked like those - cores, those _things_ she'd smashed off of Her and dumped into the incinerator. This one, at least, didn't appear dangerous, so she knelt down to pick it up. But as she held it level with her face, sheer curious surprise momentarily smothered her disappointment. It was a sphere about the size of a soccer ball, made of white metal. The source of the painfully bright yellow light was some sort of circular iris. Chell grimaced and squinted her eyes as it was shone directly into her face.

"Oh woooops, so sorry, darling, I put that on max so you could see where I was. Ha, can you believe those goof scientists put my flashlight _into_ my eye? Here, let me get that for you." With an internal _click_ muffled through its mechanics, the beam of light muted to a soft yellow glow. "There now, that's _much_ better, isn't it? Ohmygosh where are my manners? Hey, tell you what, _clean slate, _let's start over. Hey, darling, my name is Andre. What's your name?"

Her eyes narrowed, nearly threateningly, at the sphere. Maybe it meant no harm by the request, but Chell had had _enough_ of people asking her questions in this place. _Name? Birthday? Deepest fear? Why are manhole covers round?_ She couldn't remember any specifics, but it was like walking into a room from a nightmare: immediately familiar, and overflowing with negative connotations. After all of that, she wasn't taking any requests.

The 'Andre' thing glanced away awkwardly after she hadn't responded for several long seconds, and wasn't giving any indication she intended to. "Ooookaaaayyyy, but anyway, so nice to meet you!" It didn't take him long to bounce back into cheerfulness. He tilted his sphere to each side as though kissing her cheeks. "Mwah, mwah!"

Chell placed him squarely onto the rubble pile and pulled the map from the inside of her jumpsuit. No matter its intentions, maybe it could help her. She held the map out to him, and meaningfully pointed at the words, _'Portal Technology'_.

Andre only briefly glanced at it. "Oh, don't bother showing me a map, darling, I _never_ could get the hang of those things. However – our brave hero interjected with ravishing glee – if you would be so kind as to attach me to that railing up there, I would be more than happy to introduce you to a friend of mine! He knows _all_ about getting around this place."

Chell hesitated. This _thing_ was strange and pretty darn Aperture Science-y, which meant she didn't trust it any more than she could eat it. At least, not without some ketchup or something.

But then again... that turret - the weird one that could talk - didn't it say that GLaDOS wasn't awake anymore? Chell turned her head upward as though expecting _her_ to lift away the roof like the top of a giant dollhouse. She wasn't convinced; after all, if her soft and squishy bag of bones survived that explosion, how was she supposed to believe a fricken robot was destroyed?

A dozen arguments flashed through her mind in an instant. Before so much as a second had passed, she'd reached a decision: she would play her cards close to her chest and not give anything away, but maybe this 'Andre' creature could help her. He even didn't have time to notice her hesitation before she scooped him into her arms and lifted him above her head to the railing. With another soft _click_, he was reattached.

"Ah, yes! This feels wonderful!" He sped back and forth. "_To dance again!_" He sang. "_I've been waiting all these years to dance again!_"

Chell watched him, her wariness begrudgingly giving way to amusement. If it was trying to trick her, it sure was having fun with the job. She waved her hand to get his attention.

"-_to daaaaance!_ Hm, what? Oh! So sorry. This way, darling!" He led the way through the Enrichment Sphere. "You see, one day I was just going for a walk, minding my own business, when all of a sudden the wall just _collapsed_ on me. I know, it was dreadful. So for the past two or four or twenty years I've been stuck in that pile you found me in."

They came to a long steel hallway fringed by observation offices. Through one of the windows, Chell could make out the abstract scaffolding of another testing chamber. Andre's flashlight flickered back on and illuminated a cone of light into the shadows.

"Say," Andre said, uncomfortable with silence, "that's a very _orange_ jumpsuit you got there. You wouldn't happen to be an employee here, like a scientist or something?"

Mentally, Chell tensed, but on the outside she didn't appear to change one centimeter; she just kept staring straight ahead with a pleasantly blank expression on her face. _Cards close to your chest_, she reminded herself.

"Ooookayyyy, not much of a talker, I take it. But that's perfectly alright, to each his own, I say! Besides, I can talk enough for three people when the mood suits me, ha!"

The hallway turned a sharp corner, opening out very suddenly into a giant room. "Aaaand we're here!" Swinging her flashlight, Chell tried to make out the room. The light only barely illuminated the far walls, but judging from the dozens of circular tables at one end and the food stands at the other, she guessed it was a cafeteria of some sort. Her interest was piqued at the thought; maybe she could find a vending machine somewhere...

"_Daisy!_" Andre called into the open space. "Daisy, sweetheart, are you here?" His voice seemed to be swallowed by the vast room. Leave it to Aperture Science to build _one_ cafeteria for what looked like the entirety of its working staff.

Chell aimed her flashlight upward. Much of the empty space between the ceiling and the floor was occupied by convoluted spirals of the same rail tracks that Andre used to travel around. They made great loops and circuits across the ceiling in seemingly random patterns. The beam of her flashlight landed on a white sphere on the rail.

_What's that?_ she wondered. As she was looking, the sphere startled her by turning in place to reveal another glowing iris, this one a soft lavender color.

"Uncle Andre!" it cried. Chell nearly dropped her flashlight. The voice was clearly that of a little girl.

Andre started, and then began flying along the rail toward her. "Oh, Daisy, I was so worried about you!" At the last word they were reunited and fondly bumped their heads together.

"Ah, it's great to see you!" he continued. "I'm sorry I didn't come back from my walk a few years ago, I'm afraid I got rather sidetracked."

The lavender sphere giggled. "You were gone?" Without skipping a beat, she continued excitedly, like she was reciting things that happened at band camp. "We were playing 'who can pretend to be inanimate the longest'!" She then whispered conspiratorially, "_I'm winning_."

"Who, you and your brother?"

"Yeah!" she giggled.

"And... how _long_ have you been playing this game?"

"Three months!" she chirped.

Andre briefly glanced at Chell before asking in a quiet, authoritative tone, "Daisy, may I have a word with Pazuzu, please?"

"Sure, lemme just see if he's busy. Pazzie!" she called around the room. "PAAAAzzie! Come out, come out whereEVER you aaaare! Hm, I guess he's busy. He's probably just plo-" her voice suddenly stopped. Her head, which had been bobbing naturally as she spoke, froze stock still and her eye blankly stared straight ahead.

Chell took a concerned step forward but before she could do anything to help, Daisy's lavender light abruptly shifted to ultraviolet. It turned to glare hard at Andre. "_What,_" it demanded in a gravelly male voice.

Chell fought the urge to yelp. This new voice was something you'd imagine coming from the depths of hell, or at least written in a psychotic black font.

"Nice seeing you, too, Pazuzu," Andre said sarcastically, his own yellow iris now bathed in the ultraviolet light.

"Poor son of Earth, know you not who I am?"

Andre shook his head and said wearily, "Oy, this again."

"I am the spirit that negates. And rightly so, for all that comes to be deserves to perish wretchedly. Sin, destruction, evil represent: that is my proper element."

Andre chuckled heartily. "Oh, you! _Such_ a kidder! Now! I believe some introductions are in order, don't you? Daisy, Pazuzu, allow me to introduce…" he turned to Chell. "Hm, you never did tell me your name, did you, darling? I'll call you… Darling. Daisy, Pazuzu, meet Darling. Darling, meet the twins! Daisy, with the lovely shade of purple, and Pazuzu in black light."

Chell raised two fingers questioningly.

"Oh, how silly of me," Andre said. "I've known the twins so long I sometimes forget having two personalities in one sphere is unusual. You see, Daisy and Pazuzu were once separate. From completely different departments of the facility, if I remember correctly. Well, sometime after all the scientists died – poor dearies – Daisy was in a bit of an accident."

"My sphere went KABLOOWEE!" Daisy shouted playfully. "It was coooool."

"Well, we couldn't get to any of the blank spheres, so we just downloaded Daisy's backup software onto Pazuzu. The end, and we all lived happily ever after so if you'll excuse me, I'm going to call Grandfather."

Daisy gasped. "Grampa's coming?"

Andre hooked himself up to a computer in the wall. "Yep. If I can get a hold of him, anyway. I promised Darling here that I'd help her find something. Why don't you two play make-believe while I deal with grown-up stuff?"

"Oooh! Oooh, follow me, Auntie Darling!" Daisy sang as she moved to the other end of the room. Chell stayed where she was in a bit of a daze. On the list of things she hadn't expected, this whooooole scenario was pretty high up. All she wanted was to get her portal gun and then _out _of this nuthouse. She craned her neck to follow Andre's path; he was now hooked up into a panel, and the sound of him speaking with someone drifted incoherently across the empty space. _Let's just hope he knows what he's doing_, Chell thought.

"Auntie Daaaaaaarliiiiiiing!" Daisy called from up ahead. As Chell watched, the girl twitched and her light flickered briefly to ultraviolet. "Aren'tcha coming for tea?"

Deciding it probably was in her best interests _not_ to piss off a little girl possessed by a demon - or maybe it would be more accurate to say a demon possessed by a little girl - Chell jogged to join her.

Directly above one of the circular tables, the railing on the ceiling descended in a shrinking spiral to end a foot above table-height, which is where Daisy now rested. Somehow, she had set up on the bench around the table a tattered rag doll, a potato, and a deactivated turret.

Daisy's light briefly flickered as she twitched again. "Join our tea party, Auntie Darling!"

Chell nervously sat cross-legged in the circle.

"Everyone, this is my new Auntie, Mrs. Darling. Auntie, this is Sarah Jane, my bestest friend, - 'Nice to meetcha!'" Daisy mimicked the doll's voice, "and Mr. Potato Head – 'Top of the morning to ya!' And last but not least Gunshot – 'Ruff! Ruff!' Now, now, Gunshot, play nice. Auntie isn't used to dogs." Daisy twitched again. "Drink some tea, Aunt Darling!"

Chell stared at them all, mouth agape.

Daisy's light suddenly flared brilliant ultraviolet. Pazuzu screeched with a gravelly, demonic voice, "DRINK THE TEA, GODDAMMIT!"

"Aaagh!" Chell hastily mimed sipping a cup of tea. She nodded her head, "Mmm!"

Lavender replaced ultraviolet. "It's yummy, isn't it! Now, now, Auntie Darling, where are your manners?" Daisy twitched again with another flash of light.

Chell stuck out her pinky finger and took another pretend sip.

"Goood."

Andre called out from the other end of the room. "Yes! Alright, everyone, playtime's over, we need to go meet Grandfather!"

Daisy cheered. "Yay!"

Chell leapt to her feet with relief. She didn't feel particularly inclined to stay on this crazy carnival ride much longer.

"Come along, Darling," Andre said as she joined him by the wall, "it's high time I introduce you to that friend of mine. He knows _everything_ about getting around this place." With his yellow light he led the way through a pair of double doors down a long passageway. Daisy swayed along the railing behind Chell, occasionally twitching ultraviolet.

Eventually, another personality sphere – this one with a gray light – came into view.

"Grampa!" Daisy called.

"Ah, greetings and salutations, my granddaughter!" The gray sphere responded. He had a gruff old man's voice, but not the kind you'd expect from an absent-minded senior: he sounded much more like an ancient wizard from some high fantasy. Chell almost expected him to carry a staff and pointed hat. "And Andre, my dear nephew or niece or etcetera, how has time treated you?"

"Just swell, aside from the whole 'buried alive' thing. You know, what _I just told you about?_"

"Ah, yes, yes, of course." He looked at Chell. "And this must be the friend you spoke of, hurmm, Darling is her name, yes?"

"That's what we _call _her, anyway."

"My fairest greeting to you, my lady," he proclaimed with a bow. "Allow me to introduce myself: I am Greywire, ranger of this kingdom and mentor to all who walk through its depths. I hear, Lady Darling, that you seek the Wand of Dimensions."

_The say what now?_ Chell turned to Andre for a translation.

Andre said, "Bear him no mind, Darling. He likes to think up archaic names for things." He instructed in a loud, slow voice, "Grandfather, she's looking for the Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device. Now, are you _certain_ you know where it is?"

"How dare you question my cartographic expertise!" Greywire said. "I was ranging these halls before you were a blueprint! But enough chit-chat: we've a Wand to seek! My dear nephew informed me over our message that you fell straight through the rafters of the Enrichment Sphere in which he was imprisoned. Releasing him from his entombment was a deed that smacks with honor, and one for which I thank you, Lady Darling. If my maps are correct – and they indubitably are – this means that previous to your fall, you were nearing the Chamber in which the Wand of Dimensions was locked away countless eons ago."

"'Countless eons'?" Andre rolled his eye with amusement.

"Hyperbole is the spice of speech! Now follow, all: the Chamber should be near!"

Greywire led the way through the passageways, and Chell was surprised - and pleased - to find he hadn't been exaggerating. They hadn't been traveling long before Greywire ducked into a tiny maintenance shaft only large enough for a ladder which had been tucked, almost hidden, in the wall. It led them up just two stories and then they emerged at the entrance to the Portal Technology wing. They passed under a giant wooden sign showing two smiling stick figures flying through the air between two portals.

"Halt!" Greywire barked. "We have reached our destination. The Chamber of the Wand of Dimensions lies beyond." They had come to a small white door.

Chell frowned, though not unhappily. That was it? She'd just sort been expecting something a little more... impressive.

"Go on, Auntie!" Daisy goaded her. "I wanna see! I wanna see!"

With a shrug, Chell stepped forward and turned the knob.

With a surprising grating sound, the door collapsed in on its hinges. She scrambled past the splintered edge to duck into the room, which was little more than a large storage closet. It was all empty, save for a single portal gun sitting on a display.

The personality spheres couldn't pass through the door, half-hanging on its hinges as it was, but the three of them squeezed together to peek through the gap.

Chell strolled down the length of the room, half-expecting her foot to trip a ridiculous dungeon trap. The cones of light from each of the spheres illuminated the gun like spotlights. Its ivory panels were smooth and vaguely warm under her fingertips, like it was a living thing. Looped through its insectile shape and drooping over the display's edge was a black nylon-web shoulder strap, something a guitar would hang from.

That same terrifying thought, the one she'd had just before jumping down the elevator shaft, struck her again. And like before, she pushed it down.

The strap slunk over her shoulder and her right forearm slid into the ergonomic sleeve up to her elbow. She'd never really noticed a difference between her two arms when it came to things like writing, but it was the hand she was accustomed to.

The controls felt _so_... familiar.

A couple dozen conflicting thoughts blazed through Chell's mind like a spray of seawater catching light for a moment before it splashed back to the surface. And in that 128-bit core processor of a brain of hers she saw them all, registered their meaning, and let them drop in a single moment because sitting around and thinking wasn't her.

But if she _had_ lingered on the feeling, she wouldn't have been too pleased at what she saw. She'd have seen all the little associations she'd linked to the portal gun over the course of her testing like it was a Christmas tree and each memory was another shiny bauble she'd hung on its branches. There were plenty of negative ones, and she was fine with that. She'd have remembered the acidic paranoia hovering on the nape of her neck whenever that cold, murderous voice reverberated through the walls. She'd have remembered that first long drop she'd made and the instinctual terror that ripped through her when her brain shouted it was too far, _too far_. There was even the memory of those arcs of pain shooting through her hand from the toxic sludge.

What really scared her were the positive associations: the strange _lifting_ feeling she'd gotten the moment her hand slipped into place and her fingers felt the familiar triggers. It reminded her of her own speaking voice: it gave her a sense of strength. Her voice was something she could withhold, something she could keep hidden away like a miser's last piece of gold. But _this_, the portal gun, was empowerment _improved_. It wasn't a childish act of passive rebellion in withholding the one and only thing she could; this was _active_ resistance. This was _power_.

She pulled the trigger her index finger rested on, and with an unnatural sound like a cross between a _whoosh_ and a _hiss_, a blue wad of energy flew across the room and painted a neat oval on the wall. She pressed the trigger on her middle finger and fired an orange one at the floor. She flicked a switch with her thumb, and both portals disappeared.

She wasn't one to dwell on her emotions so all of these thoughts went largely unexamined, or at least preferably ignored. No, the only thing she knew was that now, holding the portal gun after so much _nonsense_, she could finally escape without Her interference. She was about to burst with happiness. She turned to her friends and nodded with a big smile on her face.

"You have gained the treasure you sought," Greywire said, staring off into the distance. "And now the time has come for your debt to be repaid. Lady Darling of the Unheard Voice, it is my sad duty to bestow upon you this dread task." He turned to look her in the eye, and -

Andre groaned with impatience. "Come _on,_ it's not that serious! Darling. We just want your help downloading us into the Personality Database. That's it."

"_Hurrumph_. Nothing wrong with a little showmanship."

Andre explained, "It's just this database in the CS wing not too far from here and we've been trying _so_ hard to get there for _so_ long but we've just needed a human to get us there and operate it and I don't think we're exactly _likely_ to bump into another one of those sometimes soon and I _know_ you've already helped me out and thank you _so_ much for that but if you could just find it in your heart to help us out with this _one_ quick little favor before you leave then I think I'm speaking for all of us when I say we would _really_ appreciate it."

Chell rubbed her ear when he finally finished. That was one _hell_ of a run-on sentence, but she was pretty sure she got what he was saying. She switched her gaze to contemplate the three cores with four personalities. She saved Andre, they got her her portal gun, they were even. The whole time she'd been run through testing chambers like an adrenaline-jacked rat in a maze, she'd never once had to consider anyone's welfare other than herself: it simply hadn't come up. And before that -

_- pure flame flared through her mind, banishing the thought and -_

- and she didn't really have time to think about anything before that. Rubbing her head without realizing it, she suddenly felt very displaced, like she'd been plonked here out of nowhere. Her first priority was herself and getting the heck out of Dodge, but... hey, if they just happened to be going in the same direction she was...

After a few long seconds' tense silence, Chell gave them a small reassuring smile and shrugged. _Why not?_

"_YES,_ thank you, thank you, thank you!"

"Your valour shines through!"

"_NAUGHT SO INSIPID IN THE WORLD I FIND AS A DEVIL IN DESPAIR _- heehee, what I miss?"

"Onward to destiny! For haste's sake, Lady Darling, I ask you hold on to me, and I shall carry you to our final destination."

Grasping the portal gun with one hand, Chell jumped up and grabbed onto Greywire's lower handle.

"Oof! Not to worry, my dear, I shall manage fine. _We march!_"

Greywire, Andre, and a grumbling Pazuzu flew along the railings with Chell dangling by one arm. Much faster than before, they now passed through a maze of narrow corridors, around dilapidated test chambers, and over the ever-necessary bottomless pits in a matter of a few minutes.

They emerged from the dense conglomeration of offices and administration facilities into a massive room. The walls on either side were dotted with the irregular, perforated surface of panels and movable rooms and clear tubes which Chell knew would tessellate as needed when provided with power. As the group extended into nothingness along the thin railing, she was reminded of a spider taking a single thread from one end of a barn to another. Although her hand was threatening to cramp, she tightened her hold on Greywire.

It had been quiet for a while, which, of course, meant it didn't last long.

Without warning, Pazuzu coughed up a long stream of the harsh words, "_Within the bowels of these elements where we are tortured and remain forever Hell hath no limits nor is circumscribed in one self-place for where we are is Hell and where Hell is must we ever be and to conclude when all the world dissolves and every creature shall be purified all places shall be Hell that are not heaven._"

He then sniffed, like he had sneezed. "Excuse me."

"Quit your blabbering," Greywire barked, "we're here!" He referred to a hallway halfway up the vast expanse of the room which had been exposed long ago by one of its walls falling off. The rail the three spheres were traveling on ended abruptly a few feet horizontally from the edge of the exposed hallway.

Without missing a beat, Chell started pumping her legs to gather momentum, and then _swung_ herself off his handle and into the hall.

Greywire produced a recorded sound of clapping. "Why yes, very well done. Urm, back up you three, back up." He retreated a few feet and then accelerated off the end of the rail right into Chell's waiting arms.

"Ha! Not bad for an old-timer, huh?" Chell beamed at him and gently placed him onto the railing in the new hallway with a _click_.

The process was repeated with Andre and then Daisy, who landed heavily in her arms.

"_Aaah!_" Daisy shrieked with delight.

Chell smiled, despite herself. Holding the girl so they were nearly face-to-face, she marveled at how expressive these spheres were. There were shutters over the iris light much like eyelids, and the two bars, one on top and one on bottom, strongly reminded her of eyebrows. Daisy, over her shock at the leap, was now laughing, and Chell's eyes adjusted to the lavender light. No, she didn't think these people were dangerous.

With a mischievous smirk, Chell grappled Daisy's upper handle with one hand and began swinging her back and forth in wide arcs like a lunchbox as she strolled down the hall.

The 'twins' switched dominance rapidly. "AHahaha - _I'LL KILL YOU_ - wheee, faster! Heehee - _I'LL EAT YOUR EYES_ - Whooo! HAhahaha - _YOUR BRAIN WILL BE STABBED!_"

Andre tried shouting to Chell more information over Daisy and Pazuzu's respective merriment and blaspheming. When they got too loud, he took a brief break in speaking. "In the early days - when big old what's her face - with her big face and penchant for neurotoxin - embarrassment to the color yellow everywhere - things went south, let's put it that way - in the early days most of us, the personality cores went here - went here to download ourselves into the database - really the only ones left weren't sentient or just complete blue buffoons - but we three had to fix up Daisy so we were left behind, and we've been trying ever since to get ba - get back here. Now, luckily for _us_ A.S. tech can function at some absurdly low voltage, which is really the only reason we're still hanging around here and haven't kicked the proverbial bucket."

"One point something watts," Daisy contributed. She and her twin were getting used to the swinging and had calmed down a bit.

"Now _Daisy_," Greywire reprimanded from his position at the head of the party, "_how_ many times have I told you that watts. Don't. Exist. We operate by _magic_."

"What?"

"_What_ did I just say, young lady?"

"I'm confused."

"Darling." Andre's voice wasn't raised, but had a quiet, kind authority to it which made Chell and the other cores stop. His yellow light was reflected off the utilitarian white surface of a pair of double doors at the end of the hallway.

"We're here."

* * *

><p><strong>An Unexpected Wake<strong>

Grey, yellow, and lavender-alternating-with-ultraviolet cones of light illuminated an oval room, just on the other side of the double doors. The walls were a smooth, sterile white. Chell's heart skipped a beat when she saw glass panels in the ceiling. _Skylights?! Are we near the surface?!_ But her hope fell when she registered on the other side of the glass rows of benches on a slope, like seats in a stadium, all glaring down into the oval room. The room was an operating theater.

And sitting center-stage in the middle of the oval room was a curious piece of chrome machinery. It appeared to be some sort of simple receiving port; it was just a rectangular pedestal, a little wider than her hips and about as tall as her waist, with a wide, shallow bowl or basin on top.

"Hey, it still has power!" Daisy cheered, shining her light on a panel built into the pedestal's side, which was faintly glowing.

"Daisy, what have I told you about electricity?" Greywire scolded.

Daisy rolled her eye. "It isn't real," she sighed.

As they all entered, they spread out through the space. Conveniently enough, about five feet above Chell's head and seven below the glass ceiling was a square grid of railing for personality spheres, so they didn't have to move in a single line any more.

"Turn it on, Darling, turn it on!" Andre encouraged. "Oh my goodness I haven't been so excited in years! Ah!"

Chell wasn't completely sure what she was expected to do now they had gotten here, so she just hesitantly approached the pedestal. _F__uturistic,_ Chell thought as she examined the panel on its side, _a touchscreen. _She'd never really come across those in her old life. Or, at least, she didn't _think_ she had. She tapped the surface, and with a muted _hum_ the device awoke. Little pinpricks of light lined the edges of the pedestal and the rim of the bowl-like _thing_ on top. The panel flashed and dimly glowed with a list of processes.

"Egad, she's done it!" Greywire exclaimed. "_Witchcraft!_"

Chell, suppressing a smug grin, gave a little nod of recognition.

Without warning, bright white spotlight beamed at them from the corner. "Hello."

The human and three spheres screamed as one like a mystery-solving crew faced with a mummy. Then, a moment later, blearily with a flash of lavender, "What happened?"

"I awoke," the new voice answered Daisy's question as it approached to meet them halfway in the room at a slow, measured pace - it appeared to be an ordinary personality sphere, but there was something off about it: the machinations around its blank, white iris were frozen into a pleasant, but unchanging, expression. Its voice was modulated and female, like the eternally-calm and informative interface of a GPS system. "What can I do for you today?

Pazuzu growled quietly, "Why don't you go probe yourself?"

"Request invalid."

Greywire rammed backward into Pazuzu with a sharp _crack_. "You're lucky my granddaughter couldn't hear that."

"Ohh - _ohhh,_ I know you!" Andre realized, gliding over toward the new sphere. "You're one of them 'informative' bots to help out those forgetful humans, always needing instructions for things. Heh, no offense," he added as an aside to a indignant Chell. "But, uh, more seriously, we're sort of forgotten how this works. So can you help us out, love?"

"What can I do for you?" she repeated.

Andre said aside to Chell, "You know, we don't normally point this out, but sometimes she can come across like-"

"A moron?" Daisy suggested.

"Moron, noun: a person who is generally lacking in good judgment. Tangential definition required. Judgment, noun: the ability to form an opinion objectively, authoritatively, and wisely. Logos: my model is not designed for the forming of decisions, which means I am lacking in good judgment. Therefore, I am a moron."

"Wellll, at least you've come to accept it, then. Now come on, we have some very important business to attend to here. Do you know how our very important, _highly_ authorized comrade of ours, Darling, might maybe perhaps be able to operate this thing?"

The white-lit core said, "This room will respond to a human's handprint. It was designed to prevent rogue personality cores from accessing it themselves."

"Oh, that's brilliant, then, isn't it? Tell you what, why don't you wait outside, dearie, out in the hall just in case we need you?"

"Request valid," it said in that same neutral tone, and glided out of the oval room.

Chell placed her palm flat on the panel. _Here goes nothing,_ she thought. Somewhere, something went _ding_. A circular, featureless button appeared on the panel.

"Perfect, perfect," Andre said triumphantly. He directed at the lavender-lit core, "We don't want Daisy to be alone when she gets there, but we also don't want her to be the last one here. Would you mind going last, Pazuzu?"

"Solamen miseris socios habuisse doloris," he responded, after flickering online.

"Uhhhh -"

"That means sure."

They all fell silent. Chell couldn't be sure because she had only just met this strange family, but she got the feeling they were only just now realizing that what they'd been working for for so long was really about to happen.

"Well, erm. _Ahem!_" Greywire huffed. "I suppose I shall go first, then. My Lady?" Chell nodded and caught him as he released himself from the railing. She'd seen Andre hooked up to the panel back in the cafeteria, so she knew the cores had some sort of hookup on their backs. She laid Greywire into the basin, which was exactly as wide around as himself, and heard an encouraging _click_ as the connection was made.

"On behalf of each member of our party, I thank you, Lady Darling." Greywire nodded.

Chell hovered her finger over the little circle in the panel.

They all grew silent, and then -

"AAGHH! AAAAAAGGHHHH!" Greywire started screaming.

The other two spheres freaking out behind her, Chell flailed about at a loss of what to do. She hadn't even touched the butt-

But before any of them could do anything, they realized Greywire was chortling heartily.

"It... it was a joke?" Andre said disbelievingly. The sphere in the basin only laughed louder. "GREYWIRE YOU LITTLE SHIT!"

"Ohhh, my dear nephew, if you're going to go out then do so memorably, I say! But enough dawdling. My dear Fair Lady Darling of the Unheard Voice," Greywire bowed his head to Chell as much as he could in the basin, "I can guide you no further. May I just say it has been an honor. May you someday find that which you seek."

Chell, getting into character, deeply curtsied. She then, haltingly, tapped the circle on the panel.

_Tap_.

Some long-forgotten generator in the wall started groaning to life, vibrating the walls and floor and the panels of glass in the ceiling like they were all strapped to the bed of a giant truck ambling down the road. The ventilation system died down and the lights in the hall behind them dimmed as the device rerouted power to itself. The panel at the center of the pedestal started counting down percentage points.

_91%_.

Greywire blinked as he began to feel the effects. It only took a few minutes, but soon enough he started drifting, like he was falling asleep.

_4%_.

"Let the grey rain-curtain roll back..." he murmured.

And then that was it. His grey light flashed off and he was left with his iris still open and blankly staring upward. Chell, a little shaken, was at a loss for what to do. But then the stomach of the basin opened up like the blast doors of a rocket silo and swallowed up the empty personality core. When he was gone, the basin closed back up again.

Andre said, "See?" but his voice broke with anxiety. He quickly cleared his throat and repeated, "See? Nothing to worry about. Easy-peasie, lemon-squeezy!" Chell smiled at him, warmly. He sounded just as shaken as she felt.

"Oh, hey, before I forget. Darling, join me over here a minute, please?" She met him by the entrance and he started speaking in a lower tone. "Listen, I know you didn't have to do this for us especially after you so blatantly saved my beautiful behind back there, so I thought I'd just give you a little something in return. A token of appreciation, you know?"

She nodded to show she understood.

"That white information core through there," he gestured with his head to the doors, "will now do basically anything you say. Think nothing of it, it really just took a quick _zap_ of the signature from that device around your wrist. Now, don't look at me like that, I just got the signal because I'm a _robot,_ remember? _You_ might not be able to see anything different about it, but to me that thing's giving off signals like a lighthouse."

The info sphere, aware they were talking about it, spoke muffled through the doors, "Speech recognition mode enabled. To disable speech recognition mode, please say, 'Disable' now."

Chell glared at the door. Andre, seeing her reaction, barked at it, "Ehm, _disable!_"

"Speech recognition mode disabled."

He continued without missing a beat, "It's real simple; you just write in with your finger what you want into that nifty little panel on your wrist: touchscreen, like that device over there! Convenient, isn't it?"

Chell smiled at him as wide and genuinely as she could. _Thank you_.

She wondered, as she had before, at how expressive these little balls of metal were. Although his face was really nothing more than a receded yellow eye, she could have sworn he was smiling. He then looked at the floor, embarrassed. "You're welcome, Darling. But like I said, think nothing of it. Now come on, we best get a move on."

When they returned to the center of the room, they found Pazuzu submerged and Daisy amusing herself. She was singing in her untrained little girl voice, "_Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do. I'm half crazy all for the love of you_."

Andre gulped. "Well," he said, steeling himself, "my turn." He dropped from the railing so suddenly Chell nearly didn't catch him.

As she placed him with another _click_ into the basin, he said with a breaking voice, "Darling." He cleared his throat. "Darling, I just want to formally thank you for saving me, and," he sniffed, "oh, Darling, how I'll miss you! You're the only relatively sane person I know!"

Chell lightly kissed him on either side of his head.

"Heh, mwah, mwah." He drew a deep breath through his nose - or at least, it sounded like he did. "Lay on, MacDuff!"

Chell tapped the button once more, and the same thing happened, though the generator sounded warmed up this time. The lights dimmed, the percentage counted down, and Andre's expressions grew increasingly muddled, like he was falling asleep.

_6%_.

"You know..." he slurred. "You never did tell me..." Then the yellow light extinguished, and the voice spoke no more. He, too, disappeared into the pedestal.

Chell turned to look at Daisy, who hadn't grown any closer. She was facing half away from the device, and Chell was reminded of a dog turning her head in submission.

Chell put what she hoped was a reassuring smile on her face and gently beckoned the girl closer.

"Auntie..." Daisy gulped. "... I'm scared," she whispered.

A horribly familiar shadow grew in the back of Chell's mind, but as always she repressed it. She beckoned again, this time a little more sternly. She wasn't frustrated at Daisy, but at herself and that feeling growing in her mind. _Ignore it ignore it ignore it ignore it_.

Daisy's lavender iris grew wider. "I - I..." Then it abruptly turned into a tiny violet pinprick and she fled down the railing toward the double doors. Chell lunged after her to stop her, but as it turns out someone beat her to it. Daisy slammed to a stop only a few feet from the exit, and in that same instant her lavender light, splayed out as it was across the white double doors, flared angry ultraviolet. Pazuzu pivoted in place on the rail, slid smoothly over to Chell with vague hatred in his eye, and let himself fall.

Chell caught him, but didn't turn to face the pedestal. She stared doubtingly not _to_ him, but _at_ him, _through_ him, as though there were a little hole in his chassis through which she could get a full view of that strange feeling growing in her mind.

And then, it engulfed her. She remembered stony silhouettes and cold hands and endless test chambers and cruel children and dry food. She remembered being short and afraid and alone and in pain and wanting to scream her lungs out about the unfairness of it all. She remembered that sometimes she did, until she couldn't any more. But most importantly she remembered being a little girl and wanting to _run_ from anything and everything all at once and time after time being caught or blocked or barricaded.

With the sphere in her arms, she marched toward the door. _Screw them all,_ she thought bitterly. _If a little girl's afraid, you listen. Whether she's right or wrong, you listen._ Wherever she was going, she'd just take the sphere with her, demon be damned. She was _not_ going to sit idly by as she let herself become a part of-

Then the breaks came down hard, at nearly the same spot Daisy had halted moments earlier. The core clattered to the floor as her hands clutched her temples but the sound didn't even register with her. There was just _pain_. Pain, like a baptizing fire, cremated every particle of - of - of the _something_ that had been going through her mind oh what was it what was it, planting her feet where they were, and digging her teeth tighter together. In that exact same spot in her brain she'd been getting her migraine - that chronic headache so normal to her she hardly even noticed it any more - the pain intensified like leaning into a red-hot poker until - !

Until suddenly it released, and... What was she thinking about? The fire was gone; her head was throbbing painlessly. It had been something important, she was pretty sure...

Wait, how did Pazuzu get on the floor? He was watching her with a narrowed iris, scrutinizing her, so much like those red-eyed cameras belonging to _Her_ once had. She ducked down to pick him up and returned to the pedestal. Why were her limbs so shaky? She hadn't exactly been doing anything strenuous recently.

As her headache was melting away to be replaced by rewarding and cool clarity of thought, she clicked the last sphere into the basin.

Daisy's lavender light slowly returned.

"Auntie?" she asked.

Chell leaned forward a little to get into the girl's line of sight.

"I'm sorry I ran away. I know I shouldn't have. Uncle told me that it's not forever, just until engineers come in and put all of us back, all dozen hundreds of us."

Chell patted the girl's head. _It's okay_.

She was about to press the button again, but stopped. Nearly on a whim, she craned her neck upward. The last thing the girl would see for a long time would be the glass panels in the ceiling. Like skylights, but not. Definitely not.

_Tap_.

_97%_.

"I just want to know, I - I guess. What I'm like. I mean, Pazzie looks after me an' all, but he always zips to the top whenever something happens he doesn't want me to see. Or when I'm thinking something he doesn't want me to think, like when I'm sad or lonely. But don't be mad at him, Auntie; he's my twin brother. He just doesn't like it when I'm sad. Right now he wants to zip up, but this bowl-thingy won't let him. And that's good, I guess. I want to think. I want to say goodbye."

_61%._

"An'... Grampa always tells me how things work, but I don't think they _do_ work like that, not the way he says. And Uncle is _so_ nice, but he was gone for _so_ long. I didn't think he was ever going to come back. I only pretended not to notice he was gone, for him and Pazzie. And me, I guess. _Can_ you pretend for yourself? Have something in your brain you just sorta don't think about, an' the rest of you believes it?"

_29%._ As she continued speaking, her words grew increasingly incoherent.

"But I love them all, I do. And you too, Auntie, I love you as well. But I just... I just want to know..."

_2%._

"To know what I'm like... if only there were... no other..."

Daisy's lavender light slowly faded to harsh ultraviolet. Pazuzu stared at Chell.

For a long moment, he just glared at her with that same narrowed ultraviolet eye. Finally, it closed as he _chuckled_. It was the first time Chell had heard him laugh, and the sound was deeply disturbing. Quiet and deep, but also _wrong_, as though the only things capable of making a voice like that laugh were _not_ scenarios you'd be happy to find yourself in.

"You don't even know, do you?"

Understandably, that put her off-balance. She worked her throat a little and then attempted to put on a politely questioning expression.

He didn't answer it. Instead, he said in his gravelly speech, "Turn back now and spare yourself much. There are bigger things than you and I cooking in this place; you may have the others fooled, but I know what you're capable of. Now let me fall, dropper. I've had enough of this place as you."

She didn't waste any time on this one.

_Tap!_

"And if that _thing_ is going to be following you around, you should probably keep in mind 'Reiner371'. Don't say I never did anything nice for you." Beyond that, Pazuzu seemed content not to say a thing as the percentage points counted down.

Then, maybe he had forgotten something, maybe it was the delirium, or maybe it was just his last vestiges of spite, but in his last moment before his ultraviolet light went dead, he hissed at her, "Good luck… Chell."

When the basin closed taking his sphere with it, Chell was acutely aware of how dark, and quiet, it was. How had he known her name? He hadn't given any indication of knowing - well, _anything_ until now. What the hell had tipped him off? She stood there, staring at the pedestal, for a few moments; when she decided to leave the operating theater behind, the last twinge of her headache melted away.

Waiting just outside the room was the information sphere, patiently shining its white light down the hall.

"Hello," it greeted in that same feminine voice.

Chell regarded it with a dissatisfied slant to her mouth. With her left index finger she scribbled the word, _'exit'_ into her wrist strap. She never _had_ been able to tell any significant difference between her lefts and rights.

"Searching... Twelve-thousand, six hundred, thirty-one point five results found."

Chell's mouth fell open. _Well, if I'd known getting out was _that _easy I never would have bothered with all this mess!_ she thought.

"Would you like to narrow the search parameters?"

She nodded, and added the word, _'accessible'_.

"Searching... Searching... Searching... Searching... Two results found."

She was a little gobsmacked. Did she spell 'accessible' wrong, or was Aperture Science really that much of a tease? She entered: _'select shortest dis'-_ but then scratched it out with one line and rewrote, _'select fastest travel time'_.

"You have selected Option One. Please follow me." Without another word, it started gliding down the railing at a constant velocity, and Chell walked to match its pace. It led her past the gaping hole in the wall she'd jumped through. She could even see the end of the rail her friends had used.

The next few sections were a little trickier. Although she initially thought the sphere - did it even have a name? - was going far, far too slowly for her liking, she soon realized the thing didn't stop for _anything_. If something got in Chell's way but not its own, it would continue on at its same pace and leave the clumsy human running to catch up. This is where her portal gun came in _very_ handy.

Finally, they ducked under a low-hanging sign into a platform meeting empty space. When she got a better look around her, she couldn't fight the smile that spread across her face and into the deepest part of her heart. There was_ a_ _rail car._

Chell gleefully leapt into the wide-open cabin as the info sphere made a series of beeping sounds at the console. Whatever it did, it worked. The system started _whirring_ to life and the core zipped into the same cab as Chell just as the doors were closing.

All her worries cleared like mist when she heavily sank into the faux-leather seats of the rail car. It was _moving_. _I'm out_, a quiet voice in her head whispered. It was less a thought than a feeling: another strange _lifting _sensation in her chest that made her feel lighter than air. _I'm out._

She tried in vain to shrug off the emotion – so many countless times had she raised her hopes only for them to be dashed down again – but the rail car was actually _moving!_

"Welcome to the Aperture Science Mono-Electric Transit System," a recording of Cave Johnson's voice played over the speakers. Chell stretched out on the seats. "If you're hearing this, then congratulations on being among the select few qualified enough to work in what _I_ consider to be the greatest monument to Science ever built."

For no particular reason she could identify – nostalgia? paranoia? spite? – Chell twisted in place to look back at the shrinking console. For the fraction of a second before the rail car turned a corner, she could have sworn she saw a _person _tapping away at the keys – but she blinked and the wall obscured her vision.

"While you're essentially trapped here in the monorail and you have no choice but to listen to what I say, let's go over a few rules.

"Number 1: Do _not jump out of the monorail_. That's a three thousand foot drop beneath you, people. So unless you're made of rubber – HA! – or you're part of our 'Rubber People' experiment, a fall from this height would not only kill you, but pulverize you for good measure. Gravity is just picky about these sorts of things.

"Number 2: I do not apologize for my swearing. Yes, this is a rule now, people, so you can stop asking.

"Number 3: If you feel your life is pointless, purposeless, and like you're walking through a giant hamster wheel ten hours a day just to approach your meaningless death one day sooner, well, stop thinking that and get back to work.

"Number 9: Ask not what Science can do for you, but what _you _can do for Science to _make _it work for you!

"Number 18: Do not apply to Black Mesa.

"Number 24: Move rule number 18 up to rule number 1.

"Okay, this one's fresh from the lab boys. Number, uhh," he shuffled his papers, "87: Do not attempt to stop malfunctioning machinery with your hands or genitals." There was a brief moment of silence. "_WHA-_

"Number 264: Do not exhibit paranoid tendencies. We're always watching you.

"Number-" he coughed, "- 359: If you're concerned about the mental stability of your robot manager, don't worry. We have pills for that.

"Number 716: From now on, every Friday shall be-" _cough_, "- known as Causal Monday." _Cough, cough_. "To throw off the enemy."

His voice was hoarse, like an old man's. "Ugh… does it _matter_ what number I'm at now?" He cleared his throat and banged his fist against his desk. "_So I'll give it whatever the hell number I want!_ Who says _Cave Johnson _needs to num-" _cough,_ "-er things in order! This is rule Number six hundred thousand seven hundred and forty nine!… point eight... and a half! If you're an astronaut, plea-" _cough_, "-eport to the Mana-" _cough_, "-ent Office imme-" For the next several moments, he could say nothing. Eventually, he cleared his throat and said heavily, "And you'll need a blood test."

The next recording was nearly completely obscured with static, as though it had been sloppily edited over. His voice was decades younger. "Number 7: I am _sexy!_" A woman in the background burst into laughter.

In the next recording, the only sound was a steady, quiet snore.

Chell's rail car wound through the massive complex, heading at a steady, steep upward incline all the while. She kept flinching, as though expecting something to go wrong, but nothing did. The dust in the air was so thick it parted like water over her outstretched hand. She sneezed again.

Eventually, a woman's sigh broke the monotony of the snoring, and with one soft _click_, the overhead speakers fell silent.

Finally, the car slid neatly into a docking station and Chell hopped out safe and sound. She could hardly believe it: nothing had gone wrong! No creepy A.I., no turrets, no dilapidated ruins, no spontaneous falls or crashes! She felt a surge of fondness for the white personality core in the rail car. She was still countless floors beneath the surface - what else could she expect after her numerous wanton leaps into random abysses? - but the hope she'd fought to repress before, flared bright as the sun, for the first time confident it would only be a matter of time before she got some cold, fresh air. When it _said_ accessible, it _meant_ accessible!

"For next half of evacuation, personality core railings are unavailable. Manual assistance will be required," it intoned.

Chell, more than happy to help at this point, laced its two handlebars through the strap around her shoulders so the info sphere was slung on her back. _Oof,_ she grimaced. It was a little heavy... but nothing she couldn't get used to.

Once she'd left the train platform, she found herself in a long stretch of... _dock?_ What the hell was a dock doing here; there wasn't even any water! She just shrugged it off and started walking toward the other end. She passed vessel after vessel at their respective ports, strung up by steel cables into place above the spot there _should_ have been water. Where there _would_ have been water, if the creators of this facility had been anything less than stark raving mad.

The monstrous heaps of metal it would be a stretch to call 'boats' were laid out neatly, one after the other to Chell's right as she moved down the pier. Which was for some reason made of plank wood, like any normal pier. Just, for aesthetic reasons, she guessed?

And to her left were heavy steel doors, one for each vessel. Halfway down the pier something on the otherwise blank wall caught her interest and made her stop.

It was a mural. Two trees, tall and red-barked, flanked a single steel door which sat ajar on its hinges. Their speckled canopy stretched all the way to the ceiling, inlaid over a teal sky with silver wisps of cloud. But most interestingly, they seemed to be shedding something; from their leaves drifted downward little pinpricks of pure white, like miniature blossoms.

Chell drifted her hand across the peeling paint, which was a portion of the teal sky.

"Please continue onward," the info sphere said from her back.

Unfortunately, telling Chell what to do was generally the best way to get her to do the opposite. She took a couple uncommitted steps forward, but quickly stopped again when she could see through the ajar steel door. There wasn't much she could see through the crack, but it was enough. There was some sort of _light_: some beautiful, ethereal play on the wall in the next room like the rippling light shining through aquarium glass.

Chell was curious.

As before, a hundred different arguments flashed through her mind and discarded in an instant. She _knew_ what she wanted to do, and the little compass rose in her mind pointing her to her goal suddenly switched from the end of the pier directly through the steel door.

And besides... without _Her_ in charge anymore, Aperture Science was actually, dare she think it, wonderful? All its insane gadgetry and illogical funding - it was a little like a giant playground you could have all to yourself. Now she had her portal gun, she could do _anything_. Who cared if she satisfied her curiosity and checked out the source of the light? Hell, she could go over there and be back here in ten seconds flat! Wouldn't make that much of a difference - not now she was on the home stretch - and she was just _itching_ to know.

Before she had time to reconsider, she heaved on the steel door with both hands, pulling it toward herself. It was surprisingly well-oiled, considering how old it was, and swung open easily.

"Do you want to reroute your course?"

Chell huffed with annoyance. Even as she stepped through the threshold, she scribbled into her wrist strap, _'pause route'_.

"Paused."

She had emerged into a tiny hallway lined with steel doors just like the one she'd come through. The hall ended just a few paces to her left and extended to her right a short walk to what looked like metal elevator doors. But what drew her attention was that light she'd seen; it was pouring through another one of the steel doors - this one nearly directly across the narrow hall - and dancing on the concrete walls.

A small, excited smile - like what you'd see on a child as they were about to embark on an adventure - crossed her face. Being responsible, she made sure to make 100% certain the door she'd come from was still open and not going anywhere anytime soon as she heaved open this new door and stepped through.

The date on the wall said this part of the facility had been made in the 1970's, and one of the numerous orange life preservers littering the floor read, _'BOREALIS',_ but at this moment Chell couldn't have cared less. She found herself in a massive dry dock, far larger than any of the others, at the heart of the complex.

And what she saw _in_ it was without a doubt the single strangest thing she'd ever laid eyes on. The source of the light was... wow, how could she even describe it? It wasn't a machine, that much was obvious. It seemed to be, sort of, an orb about the size of a watermelon hovering in the middle of the dry dock about fifty feet away and thirty in the air. For an untold length of time, she simply stood there, marveling at the luminescent nebula of energy undulating at its core. Actually, its appearance reminded her of those 'high energy pellets' GLaDOS had chucked at her in the test chambers in the hopes of her imminent vaporization.

It wasn't exactly the same, though. There was something else...

_Whoa_. Chell took a step back in surprise; she hadn't noticed _those_ before. Upon closer inspection, the contorting sphere seemed to be the center of some sort of network. Dozens of lines expanded outward from the sphere like the pattern of a spider web; she hadn't noticed them at first because the lines were thin as thread and nearly translucent. She was suddenly reminded of her boot prints in the concrete when she woke from her fall from the relaxation rooms. It was a lot like that, she decided, just... three-dimensional. Like someone had taken a hammer to the spot the sphere now sat and the blow had left cracks in space.

She tried to touch the nearest silver crack, but her hand just passed right through it.

Yep, this was it, she was certain. She'd come across plenty of strange things in her day, but she decided that this was officially the single weirdest thing she'd ever seen. It took the cake - and she grimaced a moment later at the use of the word 'cake'.

Chell pointed the info sphere at one of the life preservers and tapped the enter button on her wrist strap.

"Borealis. Likely a shortened form of Aurora Borealis, the academic term for the phenomena colloquially referred to as the Northern Lights. I'm sorry, additional information is highly classified. Please enter administrator password now."

An idea - a brilliant, _perfect_ idea - slapped Chell's thoughts to attention. That must have been the code Pazuzu told her!

Nearly hopping with glee, she scrawled into her wrist panel, _'Rhiner317'_.

"Password invalid."

_What?_ It took her a few seconds to realize that she didn't actually know how to spell that name. And... wait, was it 371 or 317? _Crap!_ She tried, _'Rhyner371'_.

"Password invalid. Please keep in mind all administrative passwords are case-sensitive."

Faced with the prospect of having to guess everything between _rinr317_ to _RhEyEnNhErThReEsEvEnTy-OnE,_ Chell decided it was probably best not to waste more time. Grumbling, she hefted the sphere back into her arms and pointed it at a small number on the wall.

"That is the number seventy-two."

She groaned loudly and tried a third time, this time pointing the sphere at the strange, hovering mass.

There was a short moment of processing, and then it said, "There is -1- audio file available for low security clearance personnel in reference to the search term. Should I play this now?"

Chell faced the sphere's iris and nodded vigorously. Then, clear as day, another one of Cave Johnson's recordings started playing. "To say touching the thing is a bad idea is an understatement," his voice said. It sounded like one of the recordings he'd broadcast over the intercom while the scientists worked. "Do not touch it. Do not go near it. Do not talk about it. In fact, latest results indicate that so much as thinking about it is also a very, very bad idea. One poor bastard wandered too close already, and, well... have you seen the end of _Raiders of the Lost Ark?_ Like that, but with Science.

"The Anomaly, as some of my more _theatrical_ personnel have taken to calling it, is exhibiting Calabi-Yau manifolds and radiating _this_ gluon and _that_ meson and yadda yadda yadda," he remarked among a shuffling of papers. "Regardless, it seems to be set at a fixed point relative to the dry dock, which means moving it is a simple matter of moving the entire room. The lab boys tell me the thing is absolutely _stewing_ in potential energy, which means it just needs a little bump of power to precipitate a reaction, and then well, boom goes the dynamite. They're not exactly certain just _what_ the reaction would be, but we'll save those questions for our genetically-modified, radiation-resistant descendants.

"Now, some of you have come up to me asking if you can perform experiments on the Anomaly. Well you're in luck, because I have two things to say about that. One: How in the hell did you get into my office? This is supposed to be a _secure_ floor; do you even work here? Caroline, up the security to the higher administration levels."

"Right away, Mr. Johnson!"

"And two: you're _completely_ free to perform any experiment you want on the damned thing, so long as you follow regulation! Just keep in mind that regulation states that it must be isolated at all times and no one's allowed to get near to, look at, or think about the Anomaly. So, if you have any experiments that fulfill the requirements from a good hundred feet away through ten tons of concrete - yeah, you just go ahead and do that. If you need me, I'll just be sitting over here enjoying my big steaming mug of not having _cancer_. Johnson out."

She tossed the life preserver over the edge and watched it clatter to the ground. On a whim, she hefted her portal gun onto her forearm and fired it at one of the hairline cracks in the air.

The wad of blue energy from her gun, as opposed to flying unsolicited through the apparition, swirled violently around the crack. For a few seconds, the spindly line flared blinding bright with green light and, like it was a seam in a piece of cloth someone pulled apart, Chell could briefly see something _else_ through it, like there was another side which wasn't just the other end of the dry dock. And then the crack _smashed_ back together into its previous intangible silver form as though nothing had happened.

Well, she hadn't been expecting that. She waited frozen in place, ready to sprint toward the door at the earliest sign of negative repercussions, but after the exotic, portal sounds had echoed back to her and everything continued to be still, she relaxed.

That was _amazing_. Looked unstable, though, so she probably shouldn't do it again... more than a few times. She had to see if it would _always_ do that, didn't she?

A voice in the back of her mind said no, she didn't, but that was easy to ignore.

She aimed at some more of the cracks: near, far, wherever they were. And every time that same thing would happen: they'd suck up the energy and make a lot of sound and light like they were _about_ to do something, but then snap together before she could get a good look at what was on the other side. She _did_ notice, experimentally, that the closer she shot to the Anomaly itself, the longer the reactions lasted.

Now, she wasn't an _idiot_: she knew better than to poke a tiger's eye or juggle nitroglycerin. No, she aimed a few feet - several feet, in fact, off to one _side_ of the Anomaly. Like a _responsible_ person would. With the standard unnatural _whooshing_ sound of a firing portal gun, a blue mass of energy launched toward it.

She smiled with surprise and excitement at the development: instead of traveling in a straight line, the portal energy had _arced_ as it approached the ball as though magnetically attracted to it, and then slammed into the far end of the dock, far from where she'd fired.

_Interesting_. She bent her knees and leveled the gun nearly up to her eyes. For this next shot, she'd need perfect concentration. She wanted to fire closer to the Anomaly - not unreasonably close, of course not - but just close enough to satisfy her curiosity. She was a cat, and she'd just been given the world's most enticing ball of string.

"I would not recommend that course of action," the info sphere remarked from Chell's back.

_Ah, what do you know_, she thought, and pulled the trigger.

The mass of portal energy flew, faster than it ever had, in irregular ellipticals around the Anomaly like an asteroid about a planet, orbiting again and again and again until finally its angle shifted and it dived right into the thing's surface.

Sense snapped back into Chell's head. She turned tail and _ran_, but it was too late. Launching herself as she was toward the door, she didn't see the cataclysm behind her, but she sure heard it. And felt it. A senseless, thunderstorm-in-your-living-room _explosion_ that was somehow so loud a sound and so powerful a sensation that it was both at the same time, ripped through Chell to her core and slapped her to the ground. Amazed she still had any _bones_ left, she stumbled blindly on all fours toward the little hallway.

_Almost there!_ She'd reached the door to the pier on the other side of the hallway, but had only managed it by leaning forward like walking into the wind of a hurricane. She grappled her hands around the handle of the door just as the inward force grew strong enough to lift her off her feet. Now dangling by her hands, the steel door to the pier slammed firmly shut like it would never open again. A great gale was sucking her, the dust, the life preservers, _everything _into the center of the nexus. This wasn't just wind, this was something else. Something horribly _else_.

And whatever it was beat her grip on the door handle. She careened through the second steel door and through the air. With one last surge of adrenaline, she registered only a wide, gaping, black maw of a rip in space - not like her familiar oval portals, not even like the little glimpses she'd gotten through the cracks when they'd snapped open for her. No, this was pure, unconditional, _black_.

With a scream no one would hear, Chell disappeared into the vortex.

Silence fell very slowly over the dry dock, but when it did, the facility was completely still except for the distant, muffled thud of approaching footsteps.

* * *

><p><em>.<em>

_[Credit where it's due: many of Pazuzu's lines are quotes (direct or otherwise) from Mephistopheles in Faust.]_


	7. Damage over Time

**DoT**

_Run_. Repeat that pattern of left leg over right leg over left. Stamp through verdant grass still cold from dew and toss herself over fragments of rock jutting from the compacted putty earth. Slice through the chill film of air under a florescent sky and put her shouting Achilles and abdominals and triceps and lungs on hold. And don't ever, ever, slip in the mud.

_Listen_. To the high shouts and tumble of words from the red-dotted, raw people swarming and fleeing around her. To the staccato march of gunfire slamming the sound barrier over and over until her ears are beaten numb and can only hear a high-pitched, medicinal whine like the whisper of electronics half-awake.

_Duck_. Behind trunks of pine-scented conifers so freshly fallen their inner bark is still white. Behind the waist-high skeletons of concrete, laid out in fractal rectangles like sunken islands scattered across the valley. Behind _anywhere_ offering sanctuary from the invisible lead slugs that punch through the air like spears of divine judgment, anywhere with a line of sight and enough room to breathe.

_Aim_. Her hands don't shake, though they did at first; there's a smooth parlay, now, between eye and hand which calculates the elements of battle: identifying the three-legged, inhuman targets among a thunderstorm of activity; the quick systems-check over her thin frame confirming the continued beating in her chest; the urgency of a reload by the pistol's weight in her palm.

_Fire_. A shockwave up her arm, another blow to the numbing of her ears, one less cartridge in the barrel, and that's another point for the home team: a sphere of influence on the stretch of grass is cauterized. And regardless of how soon it's replaced, the simple fact of those short few gained seconds adds up to the next item on the to-do list.

_Hope_. That the tripod rounding the bend in the trees will be the last. That all the muzzle-flares on two legs won't turn tail or flicker out. That maybe just maybe _just maybe_ the enemies of White Forest haven't won. A thought breaks the surface for only a moment, gasping for air, _"you're still human,"_ before it's sucked back into the depths and she hops back onto the tendons in her feet.

_Run_.

* * *

><p>The engine wailed under her, the tires bucked over every miniature dip in the terrain, and the glass windows vibrated on all sides, but her hands and feet moved over the controls quickly and securely. Her eyes were trained straight out the windshield, narrowed with concentration, stress, and just the tiniest bit of fun. She didn't have to glance into the rearview mirror to know her pursuer was still behind her, lumbering after her with long, slow strides. Her foot buried as deep as it could go on the accelerator, she careened between two forested faces of stone like the path had been carved through the rock with a knife. The tree trunks were rough blurs on her either side. Halfway through the gorge, a mine detonated, briefly sending the two right tires up into the air before they crashed back down.<p>

The ruined sawmill was straight ahead, flying toward her, but she wasn't concerned. _Release_ accelerator - _slam_ clutch - _first _gear - _release_ clutch - _slam_ brakes, and the two back tires screeched and kicked out to the side; she simply turned the steering wheel over and over in her hands, turning into it like a hydroplane, and the car neatly skidded around the curve, kicking up a long cloud of dirt. With another convoluted series of controls and pumping the steering wheel back the opposite direction, the car rocketed away from the sawmill to the right, around the mound of trees and _for the moment_ out of sight of the strider.

She knew it wouldn't last long, though. She was now at the northeast corner of the valley, and the water tower towered high over her, dead ahead. A few more movements from the driver's seat, and the car screeched to a long, violent stop at the foot of the tower. The car's engine was still shuddering to a stop when she burst through the door, sprinted thirty meters away, and threw herself behind a toppled, rusted oil tank in the shadow of the tower. The air was heavy with shouts and the distant thud of grenades; however, what her ears strained for were the strider's telltale muted footsteps, which had chased her across the valley. She'd baited and funneled its three hunters into a shack _filled_ with hopper mines, and it didn't seem too pleased.

Her breath slowed to the point she could taste the gunpowder on the air again. Tentatively, she took a handheld mirror from her pocket and held it aloft to peer over the oil tank. The strider was lumbering around the tree bank, swinging its giant, beetle-like head from side to side to find her.

Striders had always given her the creeps. They were among a class of shock troops the Combine called 'synthetics', or 'synths' for short. Striders, hunters, gunships, and a few other strange creatures Alyx had only heard rumors of were all alien animals from other planets in the Combine empire. From what she'd gathered, in smoke-wreathed factories on off-world colonies, the creatures were grafted with armor and weaponry into their flesh, 'improving' them for battle. It was hard not to hate them, but it was even harder not to feel a little sorry for them.

The tripod stamped right up to the water tower and prodded the now-vacant car with one speared foot. It flipped the car onto its roof like a grilled tomato - Alyx grimaced as the windows shattered into nonexistence - and then flipped it again, finally leaving it wobbling unsteadily on its poorly-suspended tires. The strider wandered past the water tower and oil tank without seeing her and continued down the trail as its harpoon legs dug holes into the dirt.

She sighed with relief and rested the back of her head against the uneven metal. This wasn't going well. The human Resistance was fighting back for _now_, but she was certain morale wouldn't stay up for much longer; at least during _yesterday's_ attack they'd had the rocket to protect. Now there was no purpose - what, were they supposed to be all gung-ho about dying to save a handful of research buildings and a radio tower? She glared at a scrap of blue sky through the cloud layer like it was keeping silent on purpose. Both sides were weary and threadbare: now it really only came down to which one would trickle out first. And somehow she didn't get the feeling it would be the remotely-controlled, half-animatronic shock troops.

Just as she was about to shake off her fatigue and rejoin the fight, a pistol magazine fell out of the sky and bounced twice on the grass. _What the_...

Turning the magazine over in her hand, she looked up at the water tower: the only tall structure nearby. A weary smile lit her face when she saw a familiar figure waving at her from the top of the water tower; somehow, she wasn't surprised to see Barney leaning over the railing with his trademark earsplitting grin. He beckoned her up with a wide sweep of his arm. She quickly glanced over her shoulder to confirm the strider really was out of sight, and then jogged over to one of the water tower's four rusted iron legs and pulled herself up the ladder, which ran at a slight angle.

"Barney," she said as he helped her off the top rung, "What are you doing up here? Don't you want to join in the fun?"

"Hey, I'll have you know that I have had _plenty_ of fun - now, yesterday, last week, and this entire blasphemous life of mine."

"Hm. When was the last time you were tested?" she teased as she took a step away from him.

"Ha. Ha. You'd better watch it, kid, or I'll toss you off the railing. Now ya want supplies or not?" With one hand, he directed her around the curve in the gantry, which ran around the perimeter of the water tower's main tank. About halfway across the walk, the railing was covered with hastily-welded sheets of metal to cover a cache of ammunition and medical supplies piled up in a Soviet-era crate.

"Oh, _sweet!_ Who brought this up here?"

"Beats me," he said. "Someone just told me about it as I was passing through. Lucky they did, too; I was running on empty."

"Hey, at least be grateful you don't have a vindictive strider on your tail," she said as she knelt by the stash. Tired of carrying everything in her pockets, she'd equipped a leather bag on her leg, which had one strap halfway up her thigh and another around her hips. There wasn't much space, so she just tucked in a handful of grenades and a few medkit vials for good measure.

"Ouch. Whaddyou do to piss it off?" he asked, watching her stock up.

"I didn't invite it to a christening," she responded with matching eye roll.

Now fully reloaded, she cocked her pistol with a satisfying, tactile _click_. As she shoved it into the holster at her side, she slowly sat back on her heels.

Off to the south side of the valley she could _just_ make out the blurry shapes of Dog and the surreal litter of strider corpses on the ground. He and a handful of rebels trained in the use of rocket launchers - Sam among them - were the last line of defense keeping the research complex secure. Up in the sky, a swarm of little black dots like a flock of crows seethed over the battlefield: shield scanners, dropping hopper mines onto the field below. She shook her head morosely as she remembered the lightweight weapon on her belt. The other side had monstrous creatures with _warp cannons,_ and she had a _pistol_. "I gotta admit, I feel pretty useless," she admitted. She spoke with her hand on her necklace and a faraway expression, as though she weren't really talking to him. "All I've been able to do is pick off hunters and make supply runs. I never considered just how _screwed_ we'd be without the gravity gun."

"Hey, shit happens, right?" the voice behind her retorted casually.

Her head snapped around to stare at him, blinking. She'd forgotten she was talking to _him_ and not _him_. She swallowed the lump in her throat and chuckled once, humorlessly, just to placate him. "Heh. Right."

Alyx rose to her feet with a hardening look in her eye. "This is all just so strange," she restarted, back to business. "Not minutes after Gordon teleports to Adlivun Electric, you just drop right out of the sky. And then minutes after _that_, all this happens." She gestured at the chaos around them, letting it speak for itself.

His eyes slowly narrowed. "What are you saying," he demanded, his tone uncharacteristically flat.

She was immediately contrite. "No, no - that's not what I meant at all. I'd _never_ accuse you of anything like that, Barney. It's just... you've got to admit the timing's weird."

His posture relaxed, her apology accepted. "The timing sure _is_ weird as all hell, I'll give ya that, but I'm pretty sure I know why I showed up so soon after the Doc left. In that escape pod - whaddya call it, an Advisor pod? - we had no idea which way was up, let alone how to get anywhere friendly. We were arguing about what to do when the sensors picked up a huge spike in energy a few miles off, an' I _just_ to say recognized a few streams of data. Uhh, what's the term: telem...?"

"Telemetry?"

"_That_." He rubbed the back of his neck and grinned, somewhat proud of himself. "I guess helping out Doctor Kleiner at his lab wasn't a _complete_ waste of time, huh? We followed the coordinates of the energy spike, and..." he raised his hands in an accepting shrug. "Here we are. I arrived _because_ the Doc left in the portal.

"As for the other thing," he continued, "you know, why these guys are attacking right now? I'd be willing to bet it's part of _some_ convoluted scheme of theirs. Though if it does turn out to be one big coincidence... Honestly? I've seen stranger thi-"

But he was cut short when Alyx suddenly grabbed him by the elbow and tugged him down behind the sheets of corrugated metal in the railing. She'd seen the strider turning around to make its way back toward them.

"_Get down,_" she barked in a harsh whisper.

Too late. They couldn't see the strider, but its triumphant shriek told them all they needed to know. Half a second later, the sheets of corrugated metal in the railing began screaming and straining against their welds as they absorbed a hail of pulse cannon fire. The rounds, bullet-sized orbs of concentrated photon energy, were rapid-fired in short bursts, which only got stronger and more accurate as the seconds ticked by: _it was getting closer_.

"_Is there another ladder?_" she shouted to Barney. These sheets of metal never lasted long as cover; she could already feel hers growing hot against her back.

"_Just the one!_" he yelled in response. She could barely hear him. His hands, not clasped over his ears, were gripping a pulse rifle. They were so close to the ladder, but the path wasn't covered. They'd be exposed all the way down.

_There's _never_ another ladder,_ she thought.

"_Go around the tower,_" he bellowed at her. "_I'll distract it, then you do the same for me!_"

"_Got it!_"

"_Ready_..." He raised himself into a low crouch, only barely over the railing, and pressed the secondary fire on his pulse rifle. With an irregular static sound and a whiff of ozone, a sphere of dark energy rammed right into the strider. "_Now!_"

Bent over nearly double, Alyx ran around the curve of the water tower as the strider shrieked behind her. The synth, disoriented, fired its warp cannon. The dark blue blast smashed into the ground with a deafening crack near the base of the tower, sending an explosion of grass, shards of rock, and dirt clods up into the air.

Alyx made it to the other side of the tower; now all she had to do was think of something to distract it again. Once that thing started firing, Barney would have only a couple seconds more of cover before the photon rounds tore through the metal like tissue paper. She blindly reached into the bag on her side and brandished a grenade; she wrenched the pin out and leaned around the curve - but she saw only empty air where the strider had been.

Everything seemed to slow down. She saw the grenade flash slowly in her hand... heard Barney call something out to her... But when the roar of adrenaline in her ears quieted, what really caught her attention were the muted, lumbering footsteps directly behind her. She turned in place to find herself nearly face-to-face with the strider, its warp cannon glowing bright blue.

She didn't think; her hand just hurled the grenade as hard as it could. The grenade flew in a clean arc over the strider and exploded a few meters behind it - with another savage alien warble, the strider was jostled and its warp cannon missed. This time, the blow struck one of the water tower's legs. A chunk of the wrought iron disintegrated in an explosion which violently shook the entire tower, knocking Alyx clean off her feet and onto her back.

The world around the water tower was tilting oddly - no, she realized, the tower was _falling_. And she was right between the ground and the tower. Gravity made her slide toward the edge, and she would have fallen off if she hadn't grabbed on to a metal rung in the railing. The angle between the ground and the tower was fast decreasing, so, now hanging from the railing nearly perpendicularly, she let go. There wasn't time to do anything else.

The fall was longer than she had thought and she slammed into the earth hard, but she managed to roll on the landing and then run. Her legs would only carry her a few long strides away before the tower crashed, sending a shockwave through the ground which sent her tumbling face-first. She couldn't think - this was all so fast - she couldn't _think!_ A moment later a torrent of icy water rolled over her, pinning her down with the weight of a toppled wall. Her muscles did nothing against the sudden pressure; she could only wait until the invisible hand pushing her down lessened enough for her head to snap above the surface for a painful, choking gasp.

She knew she was badly hurt; she could hardly move, hardly breathe, hardly even cough up the water in her throat. Lights bloomed before her eyes as her hand disjointedly fumbled at the clasp to the bag at her side. Grenade - magazine - magazine - grenade - _medkit!_

By the time she'd gotten a grip on the slippery plastic vial, pain had crashed through her shock, making itself known in full force. There was a spear through her ankle, a sledgehammer on her skull, a bear trap digging its jagged teeth into her lungs. Finally, she managed to press the vial's nozzle against her throat and clamp down on the release button. There was another, sharper and briefer, flash of pain as the fluid was forced through the pores of her skin - and moments later, warm relief. She felt something pop in her ankle; she could feel the vice on her chest release its hold - a few cups of clear water tumbled from her throat as she tore a few jagged breaths.

Then a second medkit, and then a third for good measure. When she was finished her head was buzzing a little, but she was intact and her breath came easily. Water was still flowing around her, but it was slower now and closer to ankle-deep. She turned around where she sat. Her hand flew to her necklace when she saw just how _close_ the tower had come to crushing her; if she'd done any little thing differently... she didn't want to think about that.

A little farther along, she saw the tips of two of the strider's legs sticking out from beneath the crash like spider's legs from a rolled-up newspaper. She was reminded of - of _some_ movie she'd seen a long time ago, with striped tights and ruby-red slippers; although the thought didn't make her smile, it did ease her tense expression a little.

"Barney?" she called, cautiously rising to her feet. She was pleased to discover she could keep her balance this time. "Barney, where are you? Are you okay?"

"_I live!_"

A silhouetted figure with an earsplitting grin appeared at the top - which _had been_ the side - of the fallen tower, waving down at her; the image starkly reminded her of the one from only a few minutes ago. He was still on the opposite side of the tower she'd been, which meant he was now standing shakily on top of the wreck, right next to where the rusted metal wall had popped open like a can in the microwave.

"Alyx! _HA!_ _That_ was one hell of an experience, wasn't it?! Swear, this beats a mechanical bull any day! How're ya holdin' up?"

"I'm fiiiine." She coughed again. "Sunshine and rainbows, remember?" He was battered and dripping, but didn't appear to have been hurt. "Well, _you_ certainly didn't take much damage," she noted.

"_I'm_ wearing riot armor! Seriously, shouldn't you at least have a vest?"

"I'll grab one as soon as I see the next _Kevlar R Us_. Besides," she added, scowling at the wreckage of the water tower, "if I had armor on, I wouldn't have been able to roll. I'd have been crushed under that thing like a _bug_."

"Wait! What happened to the strider?"

A laugh bubbled up from deep in her chest as the last of her weariness broke. "You might say that little problem took care of itself."

As he navigated his way down, he muttered a near-constant stream of curse words.

"Kiss your mother with that mouth?" she jibed as he landed on both feet in front of her.

"I'll have you know that went out of style when I was nineteen." He quickly changed the topic, "Think the junker's scrap metal by now?"

"It was on the other side of the tower, so it shouldn't be," she said as she led the way. Sure enough, in the latticed shadow of splintered girders sat the old sixties jalopy she'd grown so acquainted with. Everything from its peeling red paint to the pine-shaped piece of cardboard hanging from the rearview mirror that might once have been an air freshener said that this car had seen it all and was prepared to see some more. Alyx clambered into the driver's seat after kicking off the ice cube sized chunks of broken glass from the disintegrating leather. Alyx barely even waited for Barney to be fully inside before swerving up the bank.

"Watch it, kid, I'm an invalid," he said, slamming the door shut.

"Are you hurt?"

In response he just ungloved his right hand and held a finger up to the light, revealing a tiny red scratch. They both laughed.

Alyx buried her foot into the accelerator and the jalopy's engine screeched with antique fervor. They picked up speed heading south; with a slight curve to the right, they plowed straight through the middle of a fight. A smattering of rebels defended the barracks - two large, plain buildings connected by their upper floors - from a single strider, crouched low, and two hunters, making their strange chatter as they lunged after the survivors.

Alyx swerved the car to the side around the strider and _plowed_ over a hunter as they zoomed past the fight.

"_Hey!_" Barney shouted at her as the barracks shrunk behind them, "Aren't we gonna help them out?"

"You got another water tower in your pocket?" she responded without taking her concentration from the road. They bounced off the dirt path onto a narrow stretch of grass between a wall of slate rock and the trees; the scorched remains of a red shack rushed by on their right. "What those people _need_ are rockets and medkits, which are both back at base-"

They emerged into a clearing - the chain link fence of the research complex, full of armed rebels, was _just_ on the other side - when they drove right over a hopper mine. Its blast from behind them knocked the back two tires clean into the air, sending the car flying forward nearly en pointe so the ground rushed perpendicularly past the windshield. The two screamed and clutched their seats for dear life until finally the backside slammed down to the ground. Alyx only barely had time to move her foot off the accelerator to the brake pedal before they broke through the chain link fence and crashed the front half of the vehicle into the earth-covered slope.

The metal frame crumpled - the engine shrieked - the two passengers flew forward in their seats - and then, abruptly, everything fell still. For several long, relaxed moments, the only sounds were the irregular wheezing of the dying engine and the comforting band of gunfire and shouts on their either side that said they were surrounded by the good guys. Alyx's hand, moving blearily, fumbled with the ignition key until the jalopy shuddered into silence.

"Ya know what _I_ miss?..." Barney groaned with his forehead still pressed against the dashboard, "_Airbags_."

Alyx wrenched her chest free from the steering wheel with a painful gasp, "Seatbelts might have helped, too." She rubbed her bruised sternum with a grimace. "_Uhh. _Y-you got... you got any, uhh - witty remarks to make about this?" she asked weakly.

"Hehhh," he gulped to ease his shaking voice, "gimme a minute, kid; I'll think of something."

"What the _hell?_" A familiar voice cried. They turned to see the gobsmacked face of Marcus staring at them as he ran toward the wreck. He peered through the shattered window on the passenger side and laughed, "I gotta say, Calhoun, you sure know how to make an entrance!"

"One o' my better traits, admittedly." Barney motioned for Marcus to move back as he stumbled out the door.

"We've been looking for you guys," he said. "The brains are cooking up _something_ in there, and your names have been tossed around a couple times. It sounded big."

Alyx rose shakily to her feet, using the door handle as a support to survey the area. It looked like they'd crashed a hole through the chain link fence before burying their front end in the earthy slope covering this side of the complex. Behind her loomed the spindly dual peaks of the radio tower. A line of fighters, two or three thick, fortified the base; it had been a few hours ago the order went out to retreat from disorganized combat in the valley - now the human forces were either kept at the base or clustered around strategic positions, such as the barracks. The pace of activity was familiar to her: lively from the combat, but weary.

The world was... not _spinning_, exactly, but contorting, drifting, like her field of vision was the surface of a body of water. Her eyes fluttered shut as they were reminded of their night spent sleeplessly draining themselves dry. She stumbled to rest her back against the car door and cradled the carved pendant around her neck in the curve of her palm. The sounds pressed in on her from all sides like the weight of deep water, heavy and familiar with gunshots, crackling static, and yelps of pain. Was this really her life now? Although the fighting had only started recently, it felt like it had been going on a long time.

She knew she had to keep going, but the coin had flipped. On the other side of the excitement and the light-hearted remarks was an underlying pain that wouldn't go away; it could only be covered and ignored until it made itself known again, demanding to be acknowledged.

Her hand squeezed the pendant around her neck until its boxlike corners dug into her hand, but it just wasn't helping. This necklace represented to her a mother she never knew; she couldn't just force her father into it as well and expect it to work.

A familiar carillon of hydraulics and electrified joints broke through her maudlin thoughts in much the same way the _source_ of the sounds broke through the line of rebels. Her head turned just in time to see a flash of galvanized metal before two great arms swept her up into a tight hug.

She laughed aloud in shock and elation. "_Dog!_"

He spun her in a happy circle off the ground and buried his little red optic into her chest. His body was warm with the friction of movement and the peaceful hum of his internal generator. She beamed and wrapped her arms around the narrow axel in his neck. It was impossible to be upset with Dog around.

He set her neatly on her two feet and backed up to settle onto his hind legs. It was easy to imagine a tail wagging behind him.

"It is _so_ good to see you!" she cooed, patting his head. The equidistant panels circling his iris flexed at her touch in much the way a pet's ears would perk up when being scratched. She glanced over her shoulder. Marcus and Barney were exchanging a few words as they slowly moved back toward the base, but it was clear they were waiting for her to catch up. "I'm a little busy right now, boy, but listen. The people at the barracks need help _now_, as well as supplies. Do you think you can do that for me?"

He straightened up, indignant there was any doubt in the matter. He nodded vigorously. Crouching his haunches low as though he were about to play, there was a brief buildup of tension of the hydraulics in his limbs and then a great release as he launched himself past her.

"And be careful!" she shouted after him with a hand half-cupped by her mouth, but doubted he'd heard. She watched him gallop away with a slight smirk. "What a _nut_," she muttered.

Jogging up to Marcus and Barney, she caught the tail end of the former explaining something.

"- must've heard she's a demo expert, so about an hour ago they pulled her off RPG duty for some thing inside. You guys head up to the control room. I'll find her and the vort; tell them you're here. Glad you guys showed up; I was about to hunt down a radio to get you over here."

"It must be important if we're off the field," Alyx remarked, her weight shifting from foot to foot. When there was a fight going on, she wasn't accustomed to sitting out. "Are you sure you have everything under control out here?"

"They've actually been easing up on us the past few minutes!"

Her eyebrows slowly pressed together. "Really." Her voice was flat. She eyed the tree line past the guard posts with healthy skepticism. Sure enough, it _did_ appear quieter than it had been twenty minutes ago. The distant sounds of gunfire were lessening, and the only signs of trouble this close to the base were the irregular flashes of hopper mines across the grass, glittering malevolent red. Her hand drifted to the holster at her side as she turned back to Marcus, her eyes reluctant to peel away from the horizon. It wasn't like the Combine to just trickle out.

"Let's get going," she declared, and they made their way into the damp air of the research base.

* * *

><p>The control room was bathed in the yellow-grey ambient light from outside. Computers and monitors were packed against the walls in a sporadic fringe, with a single central console sitting like an island at the center. The defining point of the room was the window: it dominated an entire wall and extended across the ceiling as a skylight. With an overhang outside and its tapering point, the window looked a little like a rocket itself. Its overlook included the shut blast doors of the primary rocket silo and the two columns of red lights that formed the radio tower. Usually the mountain could be seen off to the side, but by now the front of dense clouds had swallowed it.<p>

Alyx's hands were splayed flat across the antiquated surface of the console, the rapid tapping of her thumb the only indication of her irritation. Her eyes peered down at the battle in the valley. She watched a strider - the size of a ladybug at this distance - topple over under RPG fire. The Combine was definitely letting up, but they weren't going anywhere. They usually had a straightforward policy when it came to insurgents: rush them with troops until they crumple or surrender. But if they had adapted their strategy... well, that was cause for worry.

"What are they doing," she muttered, glaring out the window.

"Sorry," Barney said from his position leaning against a shelf of monitors, "what was that?"

She pushed from the console and crossed the room at an agitated pace. Her careful defenses keeping herself under control relented.

"Why are they even _here?!_" she abruptly demanded, storming across the floor. "The rocket is _launched!_ My father is _dead_ - Gordon is _gone!_ Why come here if there is nothing. Left. What more can they _possibly_ do to us?!"

"Well, kill us, for one," Barney pointed out. "But I thought what happened with the prototype was a technical malfunction."

"Oh please, you just know it was their doing - _somehow_." She focused her thoughts into the anger. "That would just be _so_ convenient, wouldn't it, if there was just a disconnected wire or something. Just - _damn_ them, what are they even _doing_ here?! What, it would make sense to separate Gordon and then attack us, but what the hell is with this puny force? And if their focus is on him, then why come here at all?! What, just to distract us?"

"Kid - _kid!_" He removed himself from the wall to stand in her path, his voice empty of its usual levity. "Listen, just stop pacing a minute and take a deep breath. I know that things are tough right now; I get it, I _really_ do. But you keep asking me these questions I can't answer, thinking that if you know them then maybe all of this - what happened to your dad - will make some goddamn sense. _It won't_. I can promise you that. You're the only person who can keep _you_ under control, but sometimes ya just... ya gotta take a breather, y'know? No one'd blame you for sitting this one out - hell, clearly there's more than enough going on down here as it is. It'd give you time to work it all out."

"I can't just _not_ go on the mission," she stated.

"_Yeah,_" he insisted, leaning forward to look right at her, "_you can_." He moved over to the elevator slowly, keeping his focus on her. "Now, I'm gonna go find those two and whoever they're working with, and come back in a few minutes, and you tell me honestly whether or not you think you're up to this." He stepped into the lift and it started shuddering downward. "Kay?"

Her back to the wall, she fought the rhythmic shaking from deep in her chest as though she were still in public. She was embarrassed and angry and alone, but more than anything else she just felt _pathetic_. Here she was, wallowing in self-pity when there was work to be done. Here she was, standing alone in an empty room, _crying_, when she should be out there, helping.

She couldn't afford to do this, not now. There was that scent at the back of her throat: that stale, humid, horribly familiar scent that meant this was going to be a _long_ cry. Just stop, just stop, _just stop!_ she told herself. If only she could just download the chaotic mess in her brain into her hacking tool as easily as a software file, free to open up and deal with later. Somewhere it couldn't reach her, or remind her that the person who had always comforted her when she was upset would never be able to again.

Her two hands ran down her cheeks in an attempt at keeping her cool. She just had to wait for the coin to flip back.

But there wasn't time for that - the elevator in the back corner whirred to life. They would be here any second.

She hurriedly peeled herself from the wall and patted her face dry with the hem of her top. Clothing wasn't exactly top priority nowadays, so she still wore the same Black Mesa hoodie as before; the bloodstains had faded to dark brown smudges, and in a fit of sleeplessness last night she'd stitched the holes shut with a bit of loose thread. It looked the same way she felt: falling apart and over-wrung, but still expected to function.

She bundled her baggy brown jacket closer around herself just as the elevator grate clattered open. She pretended to be preoccupied with the inactive console as they wandered in. Breathing deeply, wiping her eyes, she checked her reflection in the black screen as the sounds of the group approached.

It sounded like Sam and Barney were chatting about something as they gathered around the central console. Alyx gathered her composure and raised her head; she just hoped they wouldn't look too closely at her eyes.

Approaching from the elevator, she saw Uriah in his usual crisp, white lab coat, leading Marcus. The tall man was carrying heavily in his arms a strange device. Sam and Barney stood at the opposite side of the console: the former merrily holding the straps of a stuffed backpack on her shoulders, and the latter with his usual light smile painted over a stressed face. Although Alyx was half-worried he might bring up their previous conversation, he thankfully seemed to have let it drop for now.

Suddenly, Barney ended his conversation and quipped with a snap, "Hey, Alyx, I got it: hate to _crash_ the party!"

They stared at him blankly.

Sam said, "So how's that concussion, Calhoun?"

"No, no: that's my witty remark for crashing the car."

In response, Alyx just groaned and buried her face in her hands. Although she slowly shook her head, her chest shook a little with a suppressed laugh. "You suck, Barney," she chuckled.

"Not for a few years, actually."

"And now," Uriah said, an alien overlay to his voice like the rustle of cicadas, "we can begin." Marcus settled a strange device onto the console. "I have two points of great concern to make," the vortigaunt began. "The first, is this."

The device was roughly as large as a pumpkin, but in the shape of a perfect cube. Its back was covered in a fine mesh of interlocking tubes and wires, while its front was blank except for a digital clock set at, _00:00:30,_ and a red button the size of a pea in the center. Sturdy handles had been screwed onto its either side. The overhead lights were reflected in its pale metal exterior, but its top face bore the sigil of the Resistance: an orange lambda symbol inside a circle.

Despite their situation, Alyx still managed to give Uriah a smile. "Please tell me you have good news."

"It's an EMP," Sam explained casually.

Alyx balked. "Whoa! You mean this thing's _nuclear?_" she asked, wondering whether she should take a few steps back.

"Negative," Uriah said, "it is an explosively pumped flux compression generator."

Alyx calmed. "Oh, good. How powerful?"

"This one predicts it capable of neutralizing a radius of at least 200 meters."

"It's small," Sam said, "but it ought to do the job."

"Good enough for me." Alyx clasped her hands together. "Oh, finally our luck is turning around!"

"Uh, hey, yeah," Barney interjected with a pointed clearing of his throat, "not to be slow on the uptake or anything, but _how's_ this help us? I mean, yeah, it could take out a couple striders, maybe three if we herd 'em together or something, but it's hardly a gamebreaker."

"Because..." The answer rushed quickly upon Alyx as the words tumbled from her mouth, "whatever's controlling this invasion is probably an Advisor!" She nearly laughed as the pieces fell into place. "Just think about it! The Advisors evacuate the Citadel and gather their forces on the railroads, and then use them to invade White Forest to stop the rocket. And when _that_ failed, they decided to..." her voice trailed off.

_They decided to visit the helicopter hangar when we were about to leave._

Advisors were at the head of the battle. It made perfect sense. But what made her smile falter and then slide from her face was the realization that she knew exactly _which_ ones. There would be two: one with dents from Dog's ham-sized metal fists, and the other with her father's blood. Her eyes flickered, almost hungrily, to the EMP which sat innocently on the console.

She came back to reality as the rest of the group hammered out the last details.

"Tell me that thing has a remote detonator," Barney said.

"Nope," Sam replied cheerfully, "a timer set for thirty seconds."

"If the blast doesn't get both of them," Alyx interrupted, her voice slow but heavy with authority, "then the electromagnetic pulse should fry their life support, killing them anyway. Or at least isolating them for a few hours."

The three humans and one vortigaunt regarded her in silence, the balance in the room shifted, making the distant sounds of battle sound louder.

"So unless anyone has any more questions," she concluded, "I think it's about time we end this."

"Not a question," Uriah said, "but a second matter of grave importance." He laid his hands, one over the other, on the EMP as though protecting it from the humans around him; he nodded his head pointedly toward Alyx as he said, "It is vital that you return to the pod of the Shu'ulathoi, if this device has a hope of striking our enemy's pressure point."

The two rebels clearly hadn't been filled out on this part. "The what?" Sam asked.

There wasn't time to explain so Alyx just said, "The Advisor pod. The... escape pod Barney crashed earlier." Then back to Uriah, "Why?"

"My kin will explain upon your arrival. But until you have done such, it will be near impossible to deliver this final blow."

"Alright, be mysterious," she said with a raise to her eyebrow. "So we'll just head to the crash site then come back here for the EMP." To Marcus standing beside her, "You did say they were easing up on us, right?"

"Glass..." he said.

Alyx laughed once in confusion. "Heh, what?" Marcus's eyes were wide with horror and fixed on the window - hovering right on the other side, Alyx could clearly see a little shield scanner watching them. And in its pincers was a flashing hopper mine.

Marcus violently grabbed Alyx's shoulder to drag her with him under cover behind the console and shouted, "_Glass!_"

_BOOM!_ The window exploded inward, scattering the room with shards of glass.

The room cleared slowly, and they unsteadily rose to their feet.

"_Glass?!_" a livid voice shouted from one side of the room. Barney marched over to the console with a triangular shard of glass the size of a dinner plate embedded in his kevlar vest. He yanked it out with a gloved hand and threw it to the ground, all without taking his glare off Marcus. "_That's_ what you say, _glass?!_ Why not 'Mine!' or 'Heads up!' or 'Duck!' - when you saw a fucking hopper on the other side of the window, what compelled you to say _glass?!_"

"I'm - I'm sorry!" Marcus babbled, and he looked it. Raising to his feet, he was several inches taller than Barney, but appeared to be much less that. "There wasn't time!"

"Heya, Calhoun, lay off the guy," Sam said, brushing plaster dust off her pants. "It was just a little explosion. Big whoop."

Barney made a wordless sound of frustration and stomped away.

The rest of them were recuperating from the blast, but Alyx was on edge. That shield scanner had just been watching them...

"Guys, be quiet," she ordered, her eyes unfocusing as she strained her ears.

"What?"

"_Shh!_"

At first, there were only the background sounds of the battle, loudening as the seconds ticked by. A single blast in the distance vibrated the machinery of the control room.

And then they heard it: a painfully slow tap, tap, tap on the roof, sending a thin stream of dirt trickling down from the ceiling. And then another one, from the other side.

"Oh god..." No sooner had she said the words than there was an inhuman screech from above and two hunters, one after the other, fell from the skylight to land with heavy _slams_ on their tripod legs.

Chaos erupted. One charged up a string of flechettes while the other lunged for Uriah - Barney saved the vortigaunt by shooting it down with his pulse rifle - while it recoiled, the second hunter leaped over and with a sweep of one of its three legs struck Barney full in the chest, sending him flying into the wall.

Alyx's hand flew to her side but grabbed her hacking tool by mistake. Without hesitation, she sent an arc of electricity from the tool at the recoiling hunter's face and its two stacked lights burst. Blind, it swung its head at her, toppling her to the floor. It stood over her, unsheathed its two long, curved spikes and - she felt two hands clamp down on her shoulders and violently drag her out from under the hunter just as it stabbed into the concrete.

Alyx kicked at it and stumbled to her feet as Marcus released her.

"_Get the bomb!_" she shouted to him, and ran over to an unconscious Barney.

The other hunter was by the window engaged in a duel with Uriah while Sam, wide-eyed and near panicking, tore through her bag of supplies behind him. A mass of green energy flew from Uriah's outstretched hands, but the hunter neatly sidestepped the attack and with a swipe of its clawed leg slashed through the vortigaunt's lab coat into his lizard-like skin. He howled in vortigese; he raised his hands above his head and then slammed them to the floor, creating a small green shockwave which made his adversary cringe, giving off sparks.

Alyx grabbed the collar of Barney's Civil Protection uniform and shook him.

A gasp, loud and ragged, tore down his throat as his eyes fluttered open. "_Wha-?_"

The blind hunter, hearing the gasp, fired a row of flechettes across the length of the wall, but thankfully a full meter above their heads. The little blue projectiles exploded one by one, showering the room in shattered bits of machinery.

Marcus, the EMP cradled heavily in his arms, stumbled past the blind hunter toward the elevator, but, acclimatizing to its handicap, the creature tripped him.

Alyx nearly screamed when she saw the bomb fall, but it settled onto the floor with only a small dent in its exterior. With one clawed foot the synth pinned Marcus to the floor by the nape of his neck, pressing hard enough to make him shout with pain and red liquid dribble onto the concrete. With the other foot it tapped along the floor, clearly searching for something.

Her handgun bullets tore miniature holes into the hunter's armor, but it didn't so much as flinch. When it felt the EMP, it gave a high-pitched screech of success and raised its leg to smash the device.

But at that moment, Sam plunged her hand into her backpack and retrieved an apple-sized hunk of a substance which looked like pale putty. She chucked it at the blinded hunter, where it stuck to the creature's temple with a soft smack. She held aloft in her other hand a small silver clicker.

"FIRE IN THE H-" _click._

_BOOM!_ The shock wave cracked against their skulls like a baseball bat and vibrated the control room to its foundation. When the searing light disappeared, the hunter stood dazedly with a giant chunk taken out of its chassis, and then indifferently tumbled backward into the central console.

"Now away with you!" Uriah yelled, his lab coat blossoming with yellow blood. With a surge of green power, the other hunter skidded backward. Marcus scrambled to his feet and scooped up the EMP in a single movement while Alyx practically dragged Barney with her into the elevator. Uriah grabbed Sam by the nape of her jumpsuit and with uncanny strength shoved her toward the others. "Reach the pod!" he cried. "If nothing else!"

As the iron elevator gate slammed shut, Uriah turned to face the hunter, which was crouching expectantly for a fight.

Uriah's hands glowed white-green with power. When he raised them up to his either side, arcs of electricity shot off them to connect with the walls and shattered electronics across the room. Holding his head high, he then violently clapped them together.

The four humans only felt a blinding surge of heat, green light, and a noise like an thunderclap as the elevator descended into the base.

The elevator clunked downward slowly, but they moved very quickly.

With a smile, crooked and slightly panicked, Alyx asked Barney, "How you holding up?"

He clutched his chest as she pulled him to his feet. His face shone with tears. He gasped, "It's fine, it's just a _rib_."

Growing increasingly distinct from the lower levels were gunshots, shouts, the screams of hunters. "God, they're in the base," she whispered.

_Think, Alyx, think!_ She briefly looked over them all: Sam was kneeling on the floor, pawing through her bag of supplies; Marcus stood in the corner, holding the EMP in his arms with extreme care; and Barney, slowly turning red in the face, was painfully clutching his pulse rifle.

"Alright," she said, "Sam and I will take point, and you two do everything you can to keep them off that EMP. We need to get to the Advisor pod, and from the sound of things that isn't exactly going to be a walk in the park."

She looked over her pistol and shoved it into its holster with mild disgust. "Can I have your shotgun?" she asked the woman across from her.

There was only a brief moment of hesitation, and then chucked it to her. Eyeing Marcus's submachine gun, Sam asked, "Heya, that thing has a grenade launcher for its secondary, right? Give it here." She stocked the launcher full with three M203 grenades, and one after the other tossed two glowing, melon-sized cases to Barney, who fumblingly caught them. "That's secondary for your pulse rifle. I only have the two, so don't waste them."

"Me?" he rasped, clicking them into place. "Wouldn't dream of it."

"Now come on, guys," Alyx reassured as the lower floor came into sight, "we can do this."

Through the diamond-shaped holes in the gate, a small corridor came into view. The acrid tang of explosives, gunpowder, and smoke mingled with the more metallic, gut-churning scent of blood. The noise pounded eardrums; the shock waves, even at a distance, vibrated bones. The usual walls of peeling paint were splattered with bright blood: most red above the bodies of human fighters, but one yellow above a vortigaunt. The air was polluted by a haze of smoke, thin but acrid.

At the opposite end was an open steel door to the auxiliary control room - the memory of the room immediately hit Alyx in the gut as where she'd last made her dad a cup of tea. Pacing patiently in the light of the collage of monitors was a hunter.

Through a door on the right wall just a few paces away, a gust of fire roared into the corridor; with it leaped another hunter, its chassis charred and smoking.

At that moment, the elevator grate opened with a pleasant, courteous _ding_.

"Housekeeping!" Sam announced, and launched a grenade.

The hunter was blasted off its feet and the four fighters rushed in. Alyx reached it first where it lay prostrate on the floor; she stuffed the shotgun barrel through a charred hole in its armor and fired - emptying both barrels, its internal circuitry and viscera were ripped to shreds. Alyx caught a glimpse through the doorway it had come from; it was the sloped passage into the secondary silo, and the cacophony of battle echoed up to her.

The other hunter, in the auxiliary control room, turned to them and crouched low on its three legs, screeching wordlessly.

"It's gonna charge!" Alyx cried, but Barney was already shooting it down with a long stream from his rifle; Marcus sprinted past her and heaved the steel door shut while it was stunned. Seconds later, the door shuddered in its frame under a slam from the hunter, but it held firm.

"This way!" Alyx called, and ran to a door on the left wall. Her hand was shaking so hard it took her three tries to enter 5-6-1 into the keypad, but once she did the four of them rushed into the new room.

This one was small and square; three walls bore only identical steel doors, but the left wall was a chain link fence. Through it was a long corridor of smashed crates and more bodies. They entered just as a man was stumbling toward them down the hall with terror carved onto his face. A hunter pounced on him from behind, pinning him to the ground. It unsheathed its double spikes - already dripping with blood - gored him through the gut, and let him drop to the floor.

It raised its head to look at them.

Barney didn't waste any time; he merely rested the butt of his rifle against his shoulder and fired the secondary trigger. The dark energy sphere scorched straight through the chain link fence, leaving a red-hot circle in the metal, and slammed into the hunter, disintegrating it with an echoing keen into a shower of electric-yellow sparks.

Alyx heaved open the steel door to the right, but closed it immediately - a group of vortigaunts were facing off against more hunters, and that was exactly the kind of fight you did _not_ want to be in the middle of.

"Let's go through the courtyard," she suggested, tapping the code into the door dead ahead.

It opened into daylight. The grey, grass-topped walls of the complex surrounded the narrow, rectangular courtyard which extended two meters to their right and twenty to their left.

Marcus yelped when he saw the strider towering over them in the middle of the courtyard.

"Calm down," Alyx said, as gently as she could while running to the door on the right, "it's just a dummy! Dr. Magnusson uses it to test out his new gadgets."

They gathered behind her as she reached the keypad, but someone's urgent hand grabbed her by the elbow.

"_Alyx,_" Barney said, his voice harsh.

"What is it?" She turned to look at him, but his eyes were fixated on something behind her. She didn't know what the big deal was, it was just the dummy -

And then she noticed, in the far back corner of the courtyard, a dummy strider with its support hinges, crumpled up and out of the way. Her eyes swung up to the towering figure, which stamped its three speared feet expectantly, staring down at them with malicious delight.

As its warp cannon began charging with blue light, there was only time for a single word, weak and humble though it was, to tumble from Barney's lips.

"_Glass_."


	8. Heal over Time

_[FFN doesn't allow tabs in formatting, so assume " - - " equals one tab.]_

* * *

><p><strong>HoT<strong>

Dog crouched low in preparation for a pounce, his knuckles digging into the loosened dirt for grip as he mentally, mischievously grinned at the strider before him. They circled each other slowly, then he _leaped!_ The strider leaned back from his jump, but he managed to dig his six huge fingers into a seam in its carapace, right into its soft, receded flesh. It shrieked and tried to shake him off - but by clinging to its face his body was dangling directly in front of its photon cannon. Dog pried his fingers free and fell just as a line of photon bullets tore over his head.

Without missing a moment, he redirected the force of hitting the ground into a leap toward the barracks, still with the shrieks of the strider echoing behind him. The dual buildings were crumbling under the battle; already, the second-story bridge connecting them had collapsed, and there wasn't a surface to be seen which didn't bear the singed circles of flechettes. A muzzleflash or glimpse of a hand as it tossed a grenade could be seen from the windows as the few surviving fought back from inside.

The fight for the White Forest barracks wasn't going well, but now he was here.

The hunters knew better than to risk fighting him, so they stayed clear on the opposite side of the buildings, no matter how many times he tried to circle round. _I know!_ he thought, scaling a wall, he'd surprise them by attacking from above.

Plowing his monstrous fingers right into the age-softened wood, he pulled himself nearly within reaching distance of the roof tiles - when an all-too-familiar sound registered itself behind him: a sound like striated, gathering thunder. His head swiveled.

There was only time to see a blue glare from the base of the strider.

CRRRACK! The warp cannon let off a blast of energy which disintegrated a car-sized chunk of wooden siding meters above his head - he felt the infrastructure turn to mulch under his hands as he began to fall. The ribcage of the barracks, thick wooden beams, clattered like Lincoln Logs on top of hi-

ERROR - ERROR - ERROR - ERROR - ERROR - ERROR - ERROR /- ERROR - *&ERROR - ER'RO R -./ \ERR";O~R`'_ - *&|%E"R[`RO^#R.,:` ==end

* * *

><p>29 - - PUBLIC STARTUP<p>

30 STARTUP:

31

32 ;DS,ES

33 - - ASSUME DS:STARTUP_DATA, ES:STARTUP_DATA

34 ;See Image 2.9

35 ;load WJL with temporary WL

36 - - LEA - - EBX,TEMP_WL ;build TEMP_WL low ram,

37 - - MRC - - ASN PTR [EBC],0

38 - - MRC - - VOE PTR [EBH]+4,0

39 - - MRC - - OBN PTR [EBE]+8, LINEAR_PROTO_SL

40 - - MRC - - . OE PTR [EBL]+12, LINEAR_PROTO_MG

41 - - MRC - - . . K PTR [EBL]+16, LINEAR_PROTO_EB

42 - - MRC - - TEMP_WL_ _linear,EBX

43 - - MRC - - TEMP_WL_scratch,table_lim,15

44 - - - - DB - - 66H

45 - - LGDT - - TEMP_WL_scratch

46

47 - - MRC - - EBX,CR0

48 - - OR - - EBX,PE_BIT

49 - - MRC - - CR0, EBX

50

51 - - JMP CLEAR_LABEL

52 CLEAR_LABEL

53

54 - - MRC - - CX,LINEAR_SEL

55 - - MRC - - DS,CX

56 - - MRC - - ES,CX

57 ;end sequence

Coated in cement dust and moth-eaten splinters, a little red optic flickered to life. Buried beneath the logs and boards of the old barracks, Dog's form was only visible in irregular glimpses. The immediate area was silent, but the battle had only moved to a different point: gunfire and the rhythm of voices stumbled across the distance to where he lay.

He twitched into consciousness. No - _no,_ how long had it taken him to reboot?! There was a beam across his chest, wide as a car tire, so he wriggled on his back to plant his hands against the bark and _pushed_. It groaned under the pressure, a fissure cracking open along its length, and with a resigned heave it rolled off. Dog drew himself up one limb at a time, to find a hind leg twisted and pinned under a slab of concrete.

_Alyx_, he thought. That was the main goal, the only thing that mattered. It was a command, a sentence, a memory, and a person all in one word: _Alyx_. He'd found her at the Citadel in all of war-torn City 17, and he'd found her again as she neared White Forest. How difficult could it be in one little research base?

It was difficult to get a clear view of the battle through the narrow, vertical slits between the trees. The spindly silhouettes of striders picked their ways across the grassy roof of the main research complex; through the smoke-filled air their photon and warp cannons were bright flashes. The smaller tripods weaved between their legs, organized and swift like packs of wolves.

_Alyx._

It took two quick strikes to crumble the slab of concrete and yank his ankle free, and then he was bounding down the path lopsidedly, his hydraulics readjusting for the limp.

Just like that, he was there. There was the mound of half-buried buildings rimmed by a chain link fence in the shadow of the radio tower, and all of it was getting blown to bits. Shield scanners perforated the air - they must have been the source of all the hopper mines on the ground, blinking in a great loop around the complex. Human and vortigaunt bodies were draped here and there, some in clumps, some alone.

How had this happened, weren't there sentries? Weren't there _rockets?!_

After a brief calculation, he dipped to the right to tackle a hunter from behind. It heard his footfalls and at the last second swiped a hooked leg at Dog's head, but only nicked one of his facial panels as he dodged left. In the same movement, he grabbed the outstretched limb and pulled the entire creature off the ground in a heavy circle; released one revolution later, it plowed through the perimeter of hopper mines.

Well if it wasn't dead already, it was now. Even before the wind could clear the cloud of flesh and shrapnel, Dog dived through the break in the mines. There was a high point up ahead, on the roof a few floors up; he'd have a good vantage point from there. A strider, noticing him, fired its pulse cannon - the bullets chasing his feet by mere inches - but he didn't have time to fight it off. With a sudden swerve, he barreled into one of its legs and kept running. Hopefully it wouldn't follow.

He pulled himself up onto the roof and came to an stop when the roof abruptly ended. A courtyard, long and narrow, extended beneath him, with a strider standing dead at the center.

"_Alyx!_"

"What is it?"

The voices came from nearly directly under him, and both were beautifully familiar. Happiness sparked, bright and yellow, in his mind, but was stamped out within moments, in no less than the amount of time it took to realize the strider was about to fire.

Dog threw himself into the air, arms outstretched. He grabbed the warp cannon just as it discharged, sending the blast to demolish a concrete wall into boulders. His processor was so close to the exotic weapon that he _saw_ in binary for a second. The next thing he knew, he crashed into the earth. In the moment he lay on his back, the strider lunged forward and stabbed straight through his left arm, pinning him to the ground.

"_Dog!_" a familiar voice cried.

Its photon cannon shattered his shoulder, loosening the joint. Dog lunged hard in the opposite direction once, _twice_ -and with the screech of splintering metal and snapping wires, his body came free from his arm. He stumbled as his mind was briefly overloaded with damage reports and status alerts, but he quickly readjusted his hydraulics and diverted power from the sparking cables.

It only took him a single moment to look directly at Alyx, lean onto his back haunches, and raise his remaining arm in a strong, straight point toward the door, but she understood.

Alyx ushered inside Marcus - Sam - Barney - and then followed them herself, leaning her back against the door until it shut. The battle outside was muted, but that only made the din in the base sharper. The gunfire in here actually didn't sound uncomfortably loud for a change - or maybe her hearing was finally abandoning ship.

"What about Dog?" Marcus asked, readjusting his grip on the EMP.

"He'll be okay," Alyx heard herself say.

Only a few lights still held flickering lifelines to power, so the smoke- and dust-filled air was dim and claustrophobic. They were in the main hall again, though it had never looked like this before. To the right were the remains of the hunter and vortigaunt battle Alyx had seen earlier: two wounded vortigaunts dragged their fallen brothers off to one side, the hunter carcasses left where they lay. To the left was the T-junction of the Quonset hut, the southern end blocked off by a barricade of crates, tables, chairs, _computers_, anything. A few rebels were firing SMGs through the gaps in the barricade; one tossed a grenade.

A few people noticed them come in, and greeted Alyx or Barney.

Against a wall, they all took a moment to catch their breath.

"I hope that vortigaunt is okay," Marcus broke the silence in a habitual low monotone. He was scratching a yellow stain off the EMP. "The one in the control room."

"Yeah, I hope so, too," Alyx murmured. "He said I need to get to the pod Barney crashed; as in, _really_ need to. Before anything else."

Somewhere outside, a hopper mind exploded, sending streamers of dirt falling from the ceiling.

"That might be more difficult than it sounds," Barney pointed out. His voice was still pained, but no longer a rasp.

"And what about the EMP?" Sam rapped her knuckles against the device. "I bet blowing that Advisor to Kingdom Come would be more effective than whatever that vort wants."

"In my experience," Alyx countered, "it's best to listen to vortigaunts - even if you don't know why. We're going to the pod, then dealing with the EMP."

"Great." Marcus nodded from his seat on the concrete. "How do we get there?"

"Well..." Barney moved over to the northern blast doors, motioning for them to follow. "We could always just rush 'em."

""Rush 'em?"" Sam repeated with heavy finger quotations. "Typically that only works if the rush-_ers_ are stronger than the rush-_ees_."

"We have Dog, don't we? We'll move fast, right? It's not that far."

"Are you sure?" Alyx said. "From the sounds of it, you might have broken a broken rib."

"I'll be fine: believe me, I've had worse in the past twenty four hours _alone_."

She turned to the two teammates. "What do you guys think?"

Their eyes were wide. For a few moments, neither of them spoke.

"Ach," Sam finally said with a tightening of her ponytail, "who wants to die of cancer anyway?"

Marcus, meanwhile, took a steadying breath and moved to tuck the EMP into a sturdy crate.

When he returned, fiddling with a crossbow, Sam nudged him. "You might have to actually shoot something this time, big guy."

"You might have to shut up," he muttered. She cackled in response.

"Alright, open it up!" Alyx called.

The rebel by the door looked at them like they were crazy, but obliged.

Sunlight hit them first, followed by the cold, and then they were out, stumbling into the rhythm of a run. They only got to the chain link fence before being noticed. A strider fired its pulse cannon into their group, and they scattered in four different directions.

A hunter threw itself directly in Alyx's path. It crouched low in preparation for a pounce but with a quick fire of his pulse rifle's secondary trigger, Barney let loose another dark energy sphere. Its dying screech echoed into nonexistence as every particle in its body disintegrated into shards of energy.

Alyx didn't even slow down; she just threw herself forward - scattering the gold sparks like a cloud of fireflies - and kept up her sprint.

She reached the base of the rock wall and without wasting a second began pulling herself up. Halfway up, a string of flashing flechettes punctured the rock beside her - she only had time to duck her head into the crook of her elbow before they burst. The shrapnel pricked painfully along her arm, but she'd already resumed climbing.

Burning arms dragged her body onto the plateau by the longs stalks of grass. "KEEP THEM OFF ME," she shouted to her teammates below, and disappeared into the trees.

Marcus, Sam, and Barney gravitated around a little red shack for cover, stocked with unshaved logs. They were the center of attention now, there was no denying it; their gunfire drowned out everything else as they attempted to hold off the synths. The grenade launcher on Sam's SMG disoriented a couple hunters long enough for Marcus to pick them off with his crossbow - he was actually a pretty good shot - while Barney kept his eyes and pulse rifle on the peripherals. All in all, hunters left and right fell like puppets with cut strings.

But it still wasn't enough. Like it or not, they were _fast_, and there were still more running across the valley.

Inaudible over everything else was a soft, weighty _whoosh-_ing sound, like a car careening through the air. Turns out, that's exactly what it was. A half second later, the battered jalopy crashed across the survivors' path to shatter one, two - three hunters, and off in the background stood Dog, who looked quietly triumphant about his good throw.

"_I freaking love robots!_" Sam cheered, and celebrated by launching another grenade.

* * *

><p>Casting a wary glance over her shoulder at the valley, Alyx raced through the forest. The Advisor pod wasn't hard to find: you just followed the line of shattered trees. To her surprise, at one point she saw what looked like the backs of a few people, running. They were getting the hell out of here. Not that she could blame them, but the reality made her grimace. <em>She<em> was still here, wasn't she? Even after everything?

Soon enough, she saw the pod: a round, black monolith nestled in the greenery.

A vortigaunt was standing beside it, apparently waiting for her. "Vance!" he called across the space, raising a dual-fingered hand into the air. "At last you have come!"

"Okay, what could have gone _so_ wrong that it takes precedent over _this?_" she panted as she slowed to a stop in front of him.

"The issue is not what has gone wrong, but what may be set right." He gestured her toward the pod. "Inside."

Alyx heard gunshots and the thunderous wail of synths echo off in the distance. Near the cranes, maybe. A dropship soared overhead; attached to its underbelly was yet another strider being brought to the edge of the valley.

_Please be right about this_.

They ducked low to enter the pod. The interior was like being inside an egg: round, dark, and strangely claustrophobic, despite the size. There didn't seem to be any source of illumination aside from the hundreds of tiny, multicolored lights embedded in the walls.

Three vortigaunts were already there, their necks hunched over machinery; at some point they had hauled in wires and computers, which they'd welded directly into the original circuitry.

_They look like stars,_ she thought, the little lights blinking in her eyes. A dozen questions sat impatient on her lips, but she knew they needed to act first. "What do you need me to do?"

The vortigaunt beside her, the one who had led her in, gestured to the hacking tool on her belt. "We merely require the use of your multitool."

"Sure thing." She released the clasp on her belt and handed the device over.

He passed it over to the other vortigaunts, who began working on it as one. They pried open a panel on its side, clipped some colored wires between its interior and the machinery they had set up, and started tapping away at the computers.

"What is all this?" she breathed, wondering at their work.

The same vortigaunt answered. "We have been reverse engineering the pod of this Shu'ulathoi, since it was given to us this morning."

"Why?" she asked. "I'm sure it's fascinating, but what we need to do right now is fend off the striders."

"Precisely our thoughts," he said. "I trust you are well aware the mind at the control of this invasion is none other than a Shu'ulathoi?"

"Yes, we think an Advisor is probably in charge." Her face, hesitantly, brightened. "You think the tech here could help us?"

The worker to her right chanted, "_Lahhh_, we think it so." With only a few more adjustments, they were done. One held his hand over the tool and zapped it with a bolt of green energy.

The multitool gave off a shower of brilliant white sparks - the pod around them started humming louder and louder until it vibrated their bones - the little lights in the walls flashed - and then just like that, everything fell silent.

Alyx held her breath. Tentatively, she asked, "Did it work?"

* * *

><p>Marcus killed a hunter as it was charging; its body dug up a layer of grass as it skidded to a stop, not two meters away from him.<p>

Sam and Barney had teamed up behind the shed while he was taking cover behind a tree. Dog was head-to-head with a strider.

_This is a disaster, _he thought, counting out his last bolt. The crest of the cliff face remained motionless; the grey treetops stared down at him like tombstones. The cavalry wasn't coming. His eyes locked on a body tucked among the rocks, the slash across its chest diagonal and red, and his breath turned to sandpaper in his throat.

"CARE TO HELP?!" Sam screamed at him, running from behind cover. Temporarily exposed, a string of flechettes pierced the grass in a long line toward her - and the last stabbed straight through her ankle. When it exploded, her leg kicked back and she fell, limp, to the ground.

Marcus loosed his last crossbow bolt at the hunter, forcing it to recoil long enough for him to run, hunched over, to where Sam lay. He pried her SMG from her fingers and emptied the clip in the synth's direction. In a cloud of sparks, it collapsed. He then grabbed her by the armpits and ran behind the shack - her boot, a mangled mass of leather, painted a thick streak of fresh blood on the grass.

Barney glanced at them. "_Shit!_"

Marcus immediately removed his belt and began tying it as a tourniquet around her calf.

Barney, wild-eyed, was unable to keep the hunters from swarming their way. "_MARCUS!_"

One appeared on their left, two more on their right, he could hear more coming, and -

And everything fell silent. The hunters had stopped moving.

All of a sudden, the loudest sounds in the valley were their own ragged breathing. Barney's rifle snapped back and forth between targets. He edged his way around the synths; they weren't offline or unconscious or anything, he noticed: in fact, they were watching him intently. They just weren't doing anything about it. The one nearest to Barney focused its teal, mechanical iris right into his eyes as he sidled around it: an alien regarding another alien.

Looking out into the valley, his mouth fell open. There were hunters and striders, dropships and shield scanners all standing like statues or hovering in place. Dog wandered between them, curious as well.

"What the _hell?_"

* * *

><p>Now outside the pod and looking down into the valley, Alyx was cheering. "<em>Yes!<em> Oh my god, that was amazing - that was _amazing_, I can't believe it!" She turned to the same vortigaunt - or at least she thought it was the same one. "How did you do it?"

"We conjectured that if this pod were to broadcast to the invaders a contrasting signal which _appeared_ to be from a Shu'ulathoi, they would cease their attack," he explained. His monstrous red eye was fixed on her. "Until it is able to break our code, they have no objective to complete."

He handed Alyx back her device. "We express our gratitude for the use of your multitool. It served as an adept interface between our computers and theirs."

"Yeah, don't mention it. About how long do you think it'll take them to realize they were tricked?"

"Hopefully enough."

She fought the urge to roll her eyes. She loved the vortigaunts, but sometimes they were almost too enigmatic for their own good.

The other three vortigaunts emerged from inside the pod. One of them said, "We will return to the field - we have stayed out of the fight long enough!"

As they ran out of the trees, she called, "Good luck!"

She started to leave too, but the vort stopped her. "One more moment." He clasped his two main hands together: a gesture of condolence. "This one wished to express, on behalf of this one's kin, our shared sorrow over the recently severed vortal cord of the Eli Vance. This loss has cut us deeply: he has been our ally since the days of the exodus. We wish him well on his interval in the dark."

The words were strange, but she heard the sincerity in them. "Thank you. I know he would have appreciated that." Her voice was more muted than she had anticipated, but he heard her nonetheless.

He added, "We are mindful of the words of our greatest philosopher: _companum ganne_-"

"- _Gannennen vorgenot_?" she finished. She explained with a smile, "Every vortigaunt says that. I'm sure my accent is terrible, though."

The fingers of the small hand on his chest twitched, which she knew marked amusement, similarly to how a human might smirk. "Affirmative."

With another smile and a quick nod of appreciation, she ran out of the trees and stood at the edge of the cliff.

"Everyone in one piece?" she called.

"Alyx!" Barney held a hand flat over his eyes to squint up at her. "What the hell happened? The short version, please."

"Alien magic."

"Ah, should've guessed."

She skidded down the rock face to land with a heavy _thud_. Her eyebrows knitted together with concern when she saw Sam, recumbent and bleeding, in Marcus' arms. "When did this happen?"

"Just now," Marcus answered, his impatience apparent from the rapid tapping of his fingers. "We were just leaving for the clinic." They all started pacing back toward base.

"Great," Alyx continued, "I need to get a few things sorted out first, so I'll meet you at the hangar."

"Wait," Marcus said, "what hangar?"

"The _helicopter_ hangar."

"What helicopter?!"

She laughed. "Well, how did you _think_ we were dropping off the EMP?"

"Uh... alien magic?"

* * *

><p>The clinic had filled in minutes, so the injured spread out across the floor of the main antechamber. Barney couldn't hear himself think and the stench was nauseating, but the setup was relatively effective. Or at least as effective as you could expect, given the circumstances. There were a handful of human and vortigaunt medical technicians darting between patients, and a box of medkits materialized in the lift from the basement every few minutes. The uninjured were in other areas of the base and valley, killing off the unresponsive synths while the ceasefire lasted.<p>

There was barely enough empty space on the floor to walk, but the three of them managed to find some room against the back wall. Marcus lowered Sam to the ground while Barney snatched a medkit from a crate.

Straight away, Barney tugged off a glove, held the nozzle against the inside of his wrist, and pressed the release button, forcing the sludge through the pores of his skin. As it started taking effect, he struggled to keep his hands off his chest. Through clenched teeth, he muttered to no one in particular, "Ugh, fixing bones always itches like hell."

One of the doctors - a woman with dark, tightly spiraled hair contained in a bun - approached him. Like most of the other technicians, she wore an apron made of some shiny, silver fabric which repelled liquid. "Mr. Calhoun!" she called, lowering a paper surgical mask from her mouth. She spoke in a very precise, very rapid manner that left little space for punctuation. "I'm so glad I caught you I just came here from the clinic. Can I have a word?"

Being able to breathe again for the first time in about an hour, Barney would have agreed to anything. "Sure, sure!" He shook a finger at her. "Hey, you look familiar. Did you fix my ear earlier?"

"Ha! You're going to have to be more specific." She rubbed the bags under her eyes.

"Hm... While you were picking shrapnel from my eardrum, I was the one making lewd comments about your mother?"

"Ah, yes! We were low on morphine. Still are. And as a matter of course I'd like to insist my mother does _not_ 'hate my face'."

"Yeah, my apologies about that." Getting back to business, Barney said, "So what's up?"

She planted her feet. "You were the one who brought in those citizens from that strange ship right?"

"Guilty as charged. They giving you any trouble?" he joked.

"Aside from the usual battle injuries they were fine. But I came here to tell you that one of them just - just _snapped_ a few minutes ago."

All traces of levity drained from his face. "Which one?" he demanded.

"Hm... red hair?"

He pushed past the doctor and started jogging to the clinic. Just before he left the main hall, he turned and called to Marcus, "I'LL SEE YOU AT THE HANGAR."

Marcus blinked after him. "What was that about?" he asked.

The doctor crossed her fingers. "Sorry, confidentiality."

"Uh, hey before you go, can you help out my friend?"

She dipped her chin once in a curt nod. "Of course. What happened?" Her tone was, in one fitting word, clinical.

"Uhh, flechette to the foot. A tourniquet was put on."

The mask slid back over her mouth as she knelt beside Sam's leg and rifled through the contents of the first aid kit; she tore off a strip of black tape and pressed it onto Sam's inner wrist; an electric-green line appeared, marking out her heartbeat.

The doctor put her hands, still bearing bloodstained gloves, inside the first aid kit as she examined the unconscious demolitions expert. "Tourniquet wasn't bad though it should be higher up near the artery in the thigh and you should have put a compress on the wound itself," she clipped.

"There uhh, wasn't - time."

She removed her hands from the kit; the gloves were now stainless and lightly steaming. Without missing a beat, she produced a standard medkit vial, but with yellow liquid inside.

As she injected it into Sam's jugular, Marcus asked, "What's that?"

"Plasma," she replied. "She's lost a lot of blood I don't know her type and a medkit would do more harm than good right now."

The doctor then selected a heavy pair of scissors, cut down the length of the boot zipper, and carefully removed it. Marcus only saw a glimpse of a mangled red mass and white splinters of bone before he turned his head the opposite way, a wave of nausea hitting him.

"Come on don't vomit here it's a relatively sanitary environment. Need something to distract you?"

"Eugh, yeah." He swallowed hard. "Yeah, why uh, why would a medkit not be good right now?"

"Medkits are powerful but they have their limitations. They heal tissue really quickly but they can't perform surgery. It'll just heal everything together as is and you'll end up dying anyway. We actually have a term for it: OMU or 'overzealous medkit use.'"

He heard rapid little _plink_, _plink_ sounds - probably shrapnel being removed. His eyes squeezed shut.

"To give some examples it'll close a gunshot wound but won't remove the actual bullet or if you have internal bleeding there's no guarantee a medkit won't simply fuse your organs together."

"Not helping!" he gasped.

"They're great localized antibiotics," she continued, "and they patch up cuts and bruises just fine but they won't regenerate lost limbs. Fairly frequently you'll see people stuck with disfigurements from OMU."

The plinking sounds stopped, thankfully, but Marcus didn't want to chance another look. He tried to instead focus on Sam's face. Round and rough, it was now frighteningly, unnaturally pale. Little flecks of pink scars that hinted at past demolition accidents dotted her nose and jawline. Her eyelids twitched, revealing white slivers.

"Large bones have to be set straight before you use a medkit or they'll heal crooked but small bones don't. They never leave scars but won't heal old ones. They replace lost blood... They do _not_ touch nerves... And done."

Marcus sneaked a peek over his shoulder to see the surgeon holding a green medkit vial aloft over Sam's reconstructed foot.

She pressed the vial against Sam's calf and pushed the release. Within moments, her skin was crawling as through beetles were burrowing into her foot.

A ragged breath dragged down Sam's throat as color bloomed back into her face. "Buh...?" It appeared for a moment she'd regain lucidity, but a few dull seconds later her head rested itself back onto the concrete.

"You're done?" Marcus said with some disbelief. "That - that took like five minutes!"

"Wonders of modern technology," the surgeon said with a smile. With one quick motion, she undid the tourniquet. "You two need to keep fighting?"

He nodded slowly. "Yeah..."

"Here," she handed him a bright pill, "give her this when she regains consciousness; it'll really pep her up."

"Thanks... What do I do until then?"

"Well we could always do with more plasma." With that, she grabbed her kit, rubbed her aching back, and moved on to the next patient.

* * *

><p>With black rubber gloves and a pair of pliers, Alyx conducted surgery of her own, in the socket Dog's arm used to be.<p>

"You have to be more careful, Dog," she cooed as she sifted through the bundle of wires. "That strider did a real number on you. You're lucky a hunter didn't shoot a flechette in here, or it would have blown all your circuitry." She held a rusted hubcap over the hole and quickly screwed it in place. "There. It's not the prettiest patch job I've ever done, but it'll make do for now."

With him taken care of, she rolled up her sleeve to examine the damage from the flechette: nothing serious, just dozens of little nicks like she'd run through a bramble bush. A medkit, glowing softly with green bioluminescence, sat on the table beside her, right next to her rucksack she'd left here earlier. Other people needed the medkit more than she did, so she just unscrewed the cap and sloshed a bit of the medicine onto a rag. With just a few wipes across her forearm, the cuts sewed themselves back together.

She and Dog sat, illuminated in flashes by his sparks and power core, in the old garage. Filled with old tools, gasoline, and sawdust, it smelled like home to Alyx. The muscle car - where she and Gordon had sat side-by side driving here, and again this morning as they talked, was gone. No one seemed to know where it had gone, or who had taken it, but Alyx had a hunch. Those people running from the battle in the forest... if she'd been on the road at the right time, would she have seen the same kind of people speeding away?

Dog was watching her from the corner of his eye, his facial panels tilted back in somber empathy. What kind of expression did she have on? She smiled at him. "Good dog."

He cocked his head to the side in disbelief, making her smile more genuinely. "Yes, you're a _good dog,_" she repeated.

He perked up. In his glee, he hobbled around in a circle, which made Alyx laugh.

"You know, with those three limbs of yours you could pass for a synth." He straightened up with indignation and violently shook his head. "I'm kidding, I'm kidding!"

For a moment, the smile lingering on her face, she let herself imagine she could just hole up here for a while; patch up Dog properly, maybe rest her swollen eyes, and just _not fight_ and _not think_ for a few hours. It could be like the old days, when Dog was half his current size and just being programmed to fetch; when she was more her daddy's little girl than a resistance agent; when Rosie would show off ancient fashion magazines from who-knows-where like a tabloid anthropologist, her curly hair as enthusiastic and full of life as the shade of pink on her nails.

But none of that could have ever lasted, could it? She'd always known that, even way back then. Maybe it was losing her mother at such a young age, maybe it was seeing Barney drag her dad back to base with one less leg, or maybe it was feeling Rosie's absence and finally understanding what a 'Stalker' is, but she'd seen enough of the world to know what sitting down and doing nothing got you. And there was still more work to be done.

Alyx slowly stood, lugged her rucksack onto a shoulder, and patted Dog's back. "I really need to go, Dog. Can you go join the sentries by the gate? Can you do that for me, boy?"

He bobbed his head in assent and leaned against her for another hug, before leading the way out of the garage. As he trotted away into the valley, he looked back at her and gave a yip.

A few hallways later, Alyx stopped in her tracks one step away from the helicopter hangar. She gritted her teeth but couldn't stop the moisture that started pooling in her bottom eyelids. She looked up, blinking rapidly. Deep breaths.

The hangar was built of faded concrete, but like much of White Forest the majority of its bulk was hidden by the globs of ancient moss. It was only a few steps of fresh air from the control room, where they'd all watched the rocket launch the day before.

_Get a grip,_ she told herself. With one foot resolutely in front of the other, she entered the hangar. This entrance led her to a small raised platform that overlooked the large space below.

The Mil Mi-8 helicopter still stood where it had the day before, albeit now with Dr. Kleiner beside it. He was directing a disgruntled rebel with a welding torch; they were discussing something at length, gesturing at the helicopter before them.

The great windows fringing the ceiling were still shattered from the Advisors' entry the day before. Most of the glass had been swept up, but a few glittering shards could still be seen scattered here and there on the concrete.

She took a small personnel lift from the entrance platform down to the hangar floor.

As the lift doors opened, a gruff voice grabbed her attention from a table nearby. "Ah, Vance, you're here. I see you're not one to let a pesky thing like evisceration get you down." It belonged to a grizzled man; he seemed to be manning a small radio set.

"How do you know..." She'd already been thinking his face was familiar, but suddenly it hit her. "_Right_, you were - you were in the antlion tunnels, when the vortigaunts patched me up!"

"Adam Sheckley, at your service." They shook hands.

"Hey, do you know what happened here? It seemed like we had everything under control, but then synths were everywhere."

"Yeah, they were all heading in slowly through the valley, so we all poured outside and thought we were taking care of it. But then out of nowhere they start swarming us from _inside the base_, from the lower levels, just dozens at once. Fuck me if I know how they got there - both silos were sealed - but with most personnel guarding the perimeter, they'd already taken over before we even realized what had happened."

"How the hell does something like that happen?" she asked, mostly to herself.

"That's the question of the day, isn't it?" he said, tapping a finger to his nose.

"Seems like there are a lot of those today, actually. Hey, where's your friend?"

"Griggsy?" His grey stubble made a sound like sandpaper as he scratched it. "He and I went off with the vorts to find Advisor pods, but earlier today we heard this weird alien howl _thing_ and they dragged us here. Griggs was... he was set as sentry at the southern side. Haven't heard from him in a while, not since all this started."

"Oh... I'm sorry." She spoke with real sympathy. "I hope he turns up."

"Ich... that putz is too dumb to die. Always has been."

Looking up, she saw the rebel with the welding torch was leaving Dr. Kleiner. "I should go."

He nodded at the dismissal. "Vance."

"Good morning again to you, Alyx!" the doctor said once she had approached. "Or would it be more prudent to say, afternoon? I can't help noticing the sudden lack of homicidal attempts on us," he said as he gestured in the direction of the battle. "I assume this means we've been successful?"

"Sorry, Dr. Kleiner," she said. She couldn't help smiling at his calm demeanor: even after everything, he was still the unshakable Dr. Kleiner. "Just a ceasefire for now. But with any luck soon enough we'll really _blow them away_," she glanced around to see if anyone had heard her, but no one was near and Dr. Kleiner's attention had already drifted. She cleared her throat awkwardly.

"Hm, yes, quite," he said distantly. His eyes widened with concern when he caught sight of her shirt. "Good gracious, my dear! I hope you haven't been hurt!"

She looked down - her clothes had dried from the water tower incident earlier, but the blood had left stains. She lied, "Of course not, Dr. Kleiner..." Tactfully changing the subject, she said, "The vortigaunts weren't sure how long this ceasefire will last, so I wouldn't push it. Is the chopper still all gassed up and ready to go like yesterday?"

"Oh yes, quite ready." He held a didactic finger into the air as he led her closer. "With, I might add, an additional precaution."

She noticed the helicopter had recently been retrofitted with a narrow rail welded all the way around its exterior. The rail supported a simple rectangular metal frame with roughly the same size and dimensions of a ping pong table. The rig looked like it was designed for the frame to slide along the rail all around the chopper - although why they'd need a large hollow frame was beyond her. If anything, it didn't look very aerodynamic.

"Alright. What's all this?"

"You see we have not been idle," he replied. "It was just installed overnight, along with the usual power supply and fail safes both stored in the cargo hold..."

She could tell he was preparing to jump into one of his lectures, so she cut him off. She'd learned over the years to be patient with Kleiner. "It's great," she said unconvincingly. She flicked it cautiously with her finger. It seemed to be an ordinary metal frame. "But you didn't say what it actually _does_...?"

"Ah, yes, yes, of course." He gawkily climbed into the chopper. Hastily welded into the wall of the passenger bay was some sort of panel. Kleiner tapped the panel, and with a bright crackle of electricity the metal frame sprang to life. A translucent, mottled film of blue energy stretched from one end of the frame to the other.

Alyx took a single step back in surprise. "A force field?" she wondered. She'd only seen them in the city, at checkpoints or on bridges. They were strictly Combine tech, to keep citizens from breaking regulation.

"Precisely!" Kleiner enthused. "We've altered the frequency so it negates the velocity _specifically_ of pulse weapons such that the Combine utilize. We've coined the term, Dark Energy Ballistics Barrier."

Alyx balked. "Wait." She held out her hands to stop the conversation. "Did you say _dark energy?_"

"Quite right. As I said, a dark energy generator has been set up in the cargo hold."

She raised an eyebrow. "Aaaand you're sure that's safe?"

"Why, yes, yes, we've taken every precaution. I assure you it's quite safe."

"Except when it explodes."

"Except for then, yes." He tapped another button on the panel. The force field suddenly slid along the railing to cover the door. With the tap of a button, the frame glided from the door, to the front windshield, all the way around to the other side, and back. "Quite simple, no?" he said with some pride.

Against her better judgment, Alyx was impressed. "You've outdone yourself, Dr. Kleiner," she said affectionately. At the doctor's instruction, the field blinked off so only the plain metal frame remained. "Nothing's getting through that."

"Hm! I'd like to see them try." Something over her shoulder caught his eye. He resettled his glasses on the bridge of his nose and spoke in a louder voice, "Ah, Barney! Glad to see you're joining us!"

Alyx turned around to see the ex-officer entering the hangar. He didn't seem to have heard Kleiner greeting him, however, his expression somber, his eyes focused on a single sheet of paper he held in both hands. From this distance Alyx couldn't see the writing, but whatever it was, he was completely absorbed as he walked into the lift.

"Barney?" she called to get his attention.

He glanced up. The lift clanked to a stop on the concrete floor.

"Oh, hey," he belatedly responded. He seemed to come back to reality as he was speaking. "I was just... Damn, ya know I haven't seen the chopper before. This is one hell of a setup, doc!"

"Yes, I was just informing Alyx here of a few upgrades we've been implementing."

"Where's Dr. Magnusson?" he asked. "I thought he'd be foaming at the mouth to try some new gadget of his."

Kleiner's mouth turned down in a small frown. "Hmph. He's off working on something he and I are in disagreement about."

Barney made a sound of amused sympathy. "Trouble in paradise, huh?"

Alyx's eyebrows pressed together in concern; she gave Dr. Kleiner an inquisitive expression.

His frown melted off and he gently waved away her unspoken question. "Oh, nothing either of you need to worry about, my dear. Not _yet_, at the very least. No, I'm afraid we have more pressing concerns at the moment."

Barney glared out the window. "Yeah, like the entire goddamn Earthbound Combine army knocking on our door. With _photon_ cannons. Tell you what, this ceasefire is a lifesaver."

"Yes, Alyx was just telling me about that little development!"

"Vortigaunts reverse engineered your Advisor pod," she explained, more thoroughly. "Looks like your flair for drama paid off this time."

She'd meant it as a jibe, but Barney's mind seemed to be far away. He only said an absent-minded, "Yeah..." and once again examined that strange sheet of paper in his hand.

It definitely had writing on it; black dots of ink had bled through. "What's that?"

He seemed to hesitate as he folded it up and tucked it into the inside of his jacket, saying, "Making sure we're prepared for the trip."

She opened her mouth to ask him again, but he cut her off by abruptly speaking to Dr. Kleiner. "So, upgrades, huh? Tell me, what kind of firepower this thing's got?" he asked jovially.

"Ah! Well, since you asked..." Kleiner bent over and swiped from the top of a tool kit a thick instruction manual. Kleiner led him over to a gun pod attached to one of the helicopter's hardpoints. "You'll be flying into the hornet's nest, so expect heavy resistance," he said. He held an ancient, moth-bitten manual out in front of him and squinted at it like an alien specimen. "Ahem! This gun pod is a GUV-8700, which means it was once equipped with two Glagolev-Shipunov–Gryazev's and one Yakushev-Borzov. Nowadays, however, it only has one GshG, which you can control from the copilot's seat."

"Ho. Ly. Shit." Barney's eyebrows shot up. "Are you _serious?_" He regarded the gun pod with newfound enthusiasm.

Kleiner was impressed. "Why, Barney, I wasn't aware you're familiar with rotary cannons."

Barney laughed, "I'm not! I just know that anything named after _that_ many Russian guys has to be badass!" Movement in his peripherals caught his attention; Sam and Marcus entered the hangar doors and activated the small lift. He whistled to get their attention.

Sam waved back. "Heya, Calhoun! My foot's fixed!"

Marcus exited the lift doors as they opened, moving carefully with the EMP back in his arms. "And I donated plasma," he said.

"Are you sure you're up for the fight?" Barney asked Sam, who was now bouncing on the balls of her feet. "You were out cold a good while there."

"What are you kidding me I feel PEPPED! That was loud."

"Come on, guys," Alyx said, "we _really_ need to get going; we probably don't have much time left."

"Only one moment, my dear," Dr. Kleiner cut in. "Someone in the passenger bay needs to volunteer to learn the controls for the shield and navigator. Hm... ah yes, Mr. Goyal!" he proclaimed when Marcus stepped forward.

After they all clambered aboard, Kleiner's lesson prattled in the background.

The passenger bay held a roughly cylindrical shape, its walls lined with benches and circular windows. Absolutely packing the place were boxes and crates of supplies, bungee cords securing them in place. Pressed against the back wall - which Alyx knew to be the lowerable door - was a black tower; its Combine-standard metal plating was unique compared to the rest of the cargo: the dark energy reactor, sealed for security.

Surveying the interior, Sam made a grunt of dissatisfaction.

"What?" Alyx asked, as she stowed her rucksack underneath a starboard bench. She noticed one of the short woman's boots was unmatched.

"Nah, it's just - you really wouldn't expect the interior of an old military helicopter to be... _beige_."

"Hey," Alyx's eyes focused on one of the crates: a busted up, camouflage-green one emblazoned with the symbol of an RPG. "Before the EMP, you were working rockets, right?"

Sam flashed her a smile. "You are correct! Want I should give it a go when we're up?"

"That would be great."

"And hey," Sam put in, "remember the timer'll start the moment I click the button, so be sure to fly us the hell outta there when the time comes."

A nod was Alyx's answer, stepping through a metal door. The cockpit was rickety from age. Two blackened seats sat side-by-side within the glass nose; teal-colored panels, littered with dials and switches, were packed in overhead and on the dashboard.

Barney was staring into space, sitting unfastened in the copilot's seat.

"Oh hey, kid," he sprung as she settled into the seat beside him, "I glanced over these dials, and uh," he tapped one in particular, "is our weight supposed to be this close to red?"

"Hm..." she squinted at it. "It's pretty far along, but it looks manageable. Most of the weight is probably just from the dark energy reactor Doctor Kleiner installed."

"Hold it," Barney said. "You're telling me Doc took a helicopter - which is essentially four giant gasoline-powered razor blades flying through the sky - which is already equipped with heavy artillery and high explosives - which is carrying a military-grade EMP the size of a poodle - _and gave it a goddamn dark energy-_"

"_I know_," she interrupted his tirade, "just go with it."

He shook his head with disbelief and laughed nervously to himself. He pulled on his seat harness. "I guess this means the Doc is officially hardcore, right?"

"Or just reeeally absent-minded."

"Best of luck to you all!" Dr. Kleiner shouted, stepping once more onto the hangar floor.

Alyx focused her attention on the dashboard and hoped to hell she remembered all the steps. It was all mainly intuitive, anyway: the collective, a lever on her left which controlled altitude; the cyclic, a long, joystick-like bar between her legs for acceleration; and two pedals beneath her feet to handle rotation. It hadn't been _that_ long since she'd flown... in a cosmic sense. What was the worst that could happen?

The great door in the hangar wall opened up: an elongated sliver of light which widened to open up to the landing pad, its ragged concrete edges invaded by grass. As Alyx leaned into the cyclic, the helicopter slowly rolled outside. As she flipped a row of switches along the dashboard, she couldn't help noticing the significance of where she was: the slab of concrete adjacent to the hangar.

It had been right here. The four of them - herself, Gordon, Dog, and her Dad - had stood here and watched as the Combine superportal flashed into nonexistence. It had happened so recently, but it already felt like a long time ago.

The rotors folded themselves out of storage position into the conventional four-point grid.

Gordon had been right there. Standing, smiling, a few paces behind her. The triumphant voices of Dr. Kleiner and Dr. Magnusson were enthusing over the speakers; the former more pleased over the success, the latter more congratulating himself on his genius. Dad had been right there. _Right there_. They were preparing to bring Judith back from the North. Everything had been - relatively - simple.

The rotors started churning through the air.

If only everything had just stopped right then. If only the universe could rewind to that moment, and press pause, and nothing would progress. No complications, no blood, no fear... Well, maybe a little. That was her life, after all. But no more than she could handle.

Which begged the question: _could_ she handle this? On a normal day, sure, but now?

The helicopter laboriously pulled its weight off the landing gear and lifted itself into the air.

She almost chuckled. _Impeccable timing, Alyx, as always_, she thought. Whether she could do this or not, she'd find out soon enough.

So she collected herself. Reminded herself to breathe. With a brush of her fingers siphoned off all her worries into the pendant around her neck.

"And here we go," she concluded. They flew away, leaving the research complex the size of a postage stamp behind them.

* * *

><p><em>.<em>

_[The character of Rosie is taken, with permission, from the adorable fanfic Pink Nails, by author Dorsal. It's short, it's sweet, and it's damn well-written. (The only difference in world building between the two is that the Pink Nails Alyx was a child during the Resonance Cascade, whereas the Between Minds Alyx was an infant.) Check it out, you'll be glad you did!]_


	9. Area of Effect

_[Hey, did you know there's a Portal/Half-Life comic called _Maybe Black Mesa_ on DeviantArt that's really cool? Because there is! Now you know, and you no longer have an excuse not to read it.]_

* * *

><p><strong>AoE<strong>

The fog that had been threatening to engulf the valley all afternoon loomed like a white wall over the mountains. As the helicopter slipped in, the world below grew blurry and indistinct, and then disappeared entirely into a sea of clouds.

The four passengers sat in apprehensive silence. Marcus leaned, elbows on knees, on the portside bench. His toe was tapping rapidly. Sam sat cross-legged on the floor across from him, cradling her backpack in her lap and gnawing nervously on the butt of an unlit cigarette. The only sounds from the pilot's seat were the occasional creak of the collective or cyclic as Alyx focused entirely on flying.

"Seven kilometers," Marcus announced, his eyes on the panel in the wall; a pulsing red dot tracked the Advisors' signal. It looked like they'd holed up just a little ways south of White Forest. He eyed the fog nervously through a window. "Um. Will the weather be a problem?"

"We have a compass to keep our bearing, so it shouldn't be," Alyx responded from the cockpit.

"If anything," Barney said, "it's good cover." Although his posture was relaxed and his arms crossed casually across his chest, his eyes were sharply focused on scanning the fog.

A bright wail cut through the repetitive drone of the chopper: a gunship was approaching.

"Speak of the devil..." Barney straightened up in the copilot's seat. "Looks like the ceasefire's over, people! Get ready!" Barney rubbed his hands together and then grabbed the GShG's controls, which fit neatly in his hand like a joystick. His thumb circling the trigger, he announced a quick test fire. His expression flipped from cool concentration to uncertainty when the trigger clicked under his thumb and nothing happened.

"Uh-oh." He pressed it again. _Firmly_. Nothing.

The gunship's wailing grew louder, sharper, as it approached.

"It's not working."

Alyx's eyes snapped in his direction. "What do you _mean_ it's not working?"

"I mean-"

The ship half-emerged from the fog on their starboard side, proton cannon firing wildly. The blasts ricocheted off the outer walls and left dents in the door. In the back, Marcus tapped the panel for the force field; the metal frame outside crackled to life in time to absorb the next line of shots with a barrage of dull thuds.

Alyx pressed her foot into one of the pedals, bringing the helicopter into a half-spin to face away from the gunship.

Barney clung to his seat in the spin. "_I mean the big fricken gun isn't shooting!_" he shouted.

"Well _obviously!_" She leaned forward into the cyclic joystick; they accelerated in a curved line to avoid the ship's fire.

In the passenger bay, Sam spat out the cigarette dud and hefted the rocket launcher onto her shoulder. She slid the missile down the shaft until it locked into place with a heavy, satisfying _click_. With one hand on the door lever, she waited. When the gunship paused for a moment, she slid open the door - a gale tore through the interior like ice water - and she fired.

The rocket flew in a clean spiral, but the gunship ducked to one side and shot it out of the air. As the synth started shooting again, Sam took cover behind the door. Barney, still trying to get the GShG to work, encouraged her, "Keep firing!"

"We don't exactly have unlimited ammo here! Wait." She pawed through another crate and selected which looked like a small orange magnum: a flare gun.

"The hell are you _doing?_" Barney asked.

By way of an answer, she ducked around the edge of the door and fired. A bolt of crimson light sliced through the air toward the gunship, which started firing at the strange projectile. While it was distracted, Sam nailed the ship with a rocket.

The explosion tore a hole through the synth's grafted armor and burnt the flesh underneath. Its moan vibrated the air while it shuddered under the impact. They were moving too quickly to smell the smoke that spewed from the tear, but they knew it would be of burnt plastic and charred rotten meat.

The gunship shook itself, disappearing momentarily behind the white air - then charged straight at them.

Alyx brought them into a nose dive so their tail fin barely missed a shave. The gunship soared seemingly inches above them; its slip stream sucked the helicopter tumbling through the air.

The four of them hung on for dear life as Alyx eventually managed to stabilize them. They hovered in place.

Alyx snapped at Barney, "Did you turn the safety off?"

He immediately felt like an idiot. Rubbing his forehead with exasperation, he groaned, "Where's the safety?"

Unexpectedly, the ship plummeted toward them from above, guns blazing. Alyx pulled the chopper into reverse at top speed - it narrowly missed them. Through her focus she could only shout, "Small! Silver! Switch!"

He glared at the dashboard, covered in hundreds of buttons and dials. "THEY'RE ALL SMALL AND SILVER!"

The gunship flailed around to face them. Still flying backward, Alyx reached over and flipped the safety switch beside the gun pod's controls; Barney aimed the GShG and fired at the synth. A deafening, ceaseless noise like a thunderclap erupted from the underside of the helicopter. Hundreds of bullets sent little pieces of shrapnel flying off the gunship's chassis, glittering into the air, and falling to the invisible ground far below.

Even at their decreasing distance, they could see the rotary cannon digging into the synth, revealing alien yellow gore. It shrieked - a sound that stabbed their ears - ducked down its head away from the fire, and barreled toward them in a deliberate zigzag pattern. Alyx started maneuvering up, down, all over the place. It was all she could to do evade the onslaught, let alone think about attacking; the seams and joints in the helicopter's construction groaned, threatened to buckle, under the strain.

"Alyx!" Sam called above the din, "You gotta get me a clear shot!"

"That's - not - ugh, easy!"

"Well I can't _aim_ while darting around like -" An idea cut her off. Pulling a hand out of her jumpsuit pocket, Sam noticed she was holding her plastic lighter. "Alyx!" she restarted.

"Still here!"

"Get us above it!"

The gunship's pulse turret fired along the length of the chopper. The dark energy field easily absorbed the shots going for the glass windshield, but the rest left coin-sized dents in the metal.

Alyx could barely hear anything. "WHAT?"

"GET US RIGHT ABOVE HIM! I GOT AN IDEA!" She shrugged the rocket launcher to the floor and reached once, confidently, for something in her backpack.

Alyx tilted them downward so the gunship followed down as well - then deftly careened up and over it. "NOW!"

Sam unearthed a bundle of red tubes, lit the fuse with the lighter, and lightly dropped it out the door. For a moment, she watched it as it sank through the air. It struck the gunship full in the back and spectacularly exploded. The ship nearly cracked in half and fell, fell, fell to the earth and out of sight.

After a quick bout of cheering, everyone took a collective sigh of relief, but no one was relaxing just yet. Sam sank to the floor with a pale hand over her chest. She repressed the sudden, illogical urge to laugh.

Marcus regarded Sam with an almost accusatory expression. "What that _dynamite?_"

"_Well_... do you want to get technical?"

"No."

"Then it was dynamite."

With a glance at the scanner, Marcus said, "We're approaching the Advisor. Three kilometers."

The helicopter shuddered. "Uh-oh," Alyx said. "One of the rotors is damaged!" she shouted. "We're losing altitude!"

"Are we gonna crash?!" Barney gripped his seat.

"Uh - hold on, I -" Alyx flipped a few switches. One of the red lights stopped flashing and the chopper settled into a stable hover. "Whew! No, not yet. We're fine for now, but... Yeah, we're fine for now."

"_Alyx?_"

A short, tense breath escaped her. Warnings were flashing from at least two separate systems. Although she hadn't completely gotten back into the hang of flying, she could still sense the irregularity in the engine. "Simplest I can put it? If we land as we are right now, I don't think we'd be able to take off again."

He chuckled somewhat hysterically. "That's perfect! Yes, that is absolutely what I wanted to hear right now, just perfect - _perfect!_ Okay, uhh..." He ran a hand through his hair, staring at nothing. _Keep it together, Calhoun_, an old voice reminded him. "Okay. Look, we don't _have _to land - hell, it's damn well clear the Advisors have some pretty serious guard, so landing and planting the EMP and getting out was a giant dumbfuck of an idea anyway. Sam?"

"Yeah?"

"Would the EMP still work if we dropped it?"

She clicked her tongue. "Well, it's not a warhead; if it hits the ground it's more likely to break than blow. It has a timer, remember?"

"But _could_ we drop it?"

"Well... Pshh, maybe if you dropped it from really, _really_ high up so that it hit zero just before it hit the ground?"

"Great, so that's what we'll do," he concluded. "Thirty seconds, right?"

"You don't get sarcasm, do you?"

He ignored her. "So guys, just how high do we have to be for something to take half a minute to hit the ground?"

Marcus and Sam just stared at him vacantly.

Alyx considered. _d = v*t + (a*t^2)/2 = 0 + (10*30^2)/2_

"4500 meters," she answered.

"Great. Get us to that altitude and _keep_ us there. Brace yourselves, people," Barney warned. "The day's not over yet."

They heard the gunships before they saw them. It sounded like the rapid rhythmic thudding of a jet engine crossed with a strange melodic alien moaning, like the bellows of a whale. Then ever so slowly, the indistinct shadow of a gunship appeared straight ahead, soaring at them through the mist. Farther behind it followed a second.

"Marcus," Alyx said, her voice deceptively calm, "how much farther?"

"Two kilometers to go."

Barney leaned in close to her. "You sure you got this?"

The two ships were now near enough for their silhouettes to form distinct lines against the white. Their photon turrets started glowing.

Alyx half-smiled with what she hoped was a confident expression. "Definitely."

"Okay, Marcus," Barney barked, "you grab the force field and keep an eye on that scanner. Alyx, I don't care how you do it, just get us there. I've got the gun up front, and Sam?"

She looked at him.

His eyes flickered to the rocket launcher. "Blow shit up."

She smirked and cracked her knuckles. "_With pleasure._"

Alyx turned in the pilot's seat without taking her eyes off the gunships. She shouted, "Marcus!"

"Yeah?"

"Keep a close eye on those rotors! This thing _does not have parachutes_, you understand me?"

He gulped. "Got it."

"Okay," Alyx tightened her grip on the controls. "Everybody hold on!" She leaned her whole body into the cyclic and the chopper lurched forward with rapid acceleration.

The force field cast a blue film over the front windshield as it absorbed the fire from ahead. The impacts made muted, irregular percussive beats over the churning of the rotors. The gunships loomed steadily larger as they barreled forward in an obstinate straight line.

At the last moment, Alyx banked everything hard to port. The change of direction momentarily pinned the four passengers into the sides of their seats as two lines of fire, one from each gunship, pierced the space they had just been.

The chopper whirled around as it approached the leftmost gunship. The synth's proton cannon punched a fist-sized hole through the front windshield, missing Barney by inches before the force field could get there. Barney's GShG carved a long gash down the ship's side; it wailed as yellow blood seeped through the fresh wound. As it cringed away from the pain, they charged past, leaving it behind.

The other ship was now dead ahead by about two hundred feet. Sam launched an RPG at it, but the missile was shot out of the air before it could get close. When Barney shot at it, he found the GShG's line of fire widened out at a distance: although a few slugs hit, its spread was just too inaccurate.

He did notice, however, that the synth would dodge habitually to the right when it observed the GShG's fire. He smirked. A new strategy formulated, he motioned at Sam to fire again. This time, as the missile tore toward the ship, Barney waited until the last minute. When the RPG was almost at its target, he fired the GShG to the gunship's left. It dodged to the right - _directly_ into the missile.

"HA!" he whooped. "Don't think it'll fall for that again!"

The scanner flashed more and more rapidly in the wall beside Marcus. The numbers at the bottom trickled down until finally - finally - _finally_ they hit zero. The scanner shone a clear, steady red.

"_NOW!_"

They all sprang into action. Alyx slowed the helicopter to a hover, Marcus's fingers flew over the control panel to keep them under cover, and Barney kept the ships at bay as best he could. Meanwhile, Sam unceremoniously shrugged the rocket launcher to the floor and knelt beside the EMP by the door.

She briefly brushed her thumb across a small red button on the side and tapped it. The panel on top of the EMP started counting down in red digital numbers: _00:00:30_.

With a firm tap of her foot, the EMP tilted off the edge and tumbled through the white fog just as the counters hit _00:00:29_.

"GO, GO, GO!" she shouted.

Alyx pushed into the cyclic and pulled on the collective, taking the chopper into a hard acceleration onward and upward. The two gunships fell into a last charge toward them. The one with the long scar was too far away to be accurate, but the nearer one's photon cannon smashed through the circular windows one by one along the starboard wall.

Sam's hand patted the crate of ammunition but found only bare plastic: they were out of RPGs. She raced through the crates of supplies. Still glowing ominously in the back sat the dark energy reactor. As she dug, her mind raced: no more RPGs, out of "dynamite", grenades impractical...

The force field was a blue window over the starboard door. The gunship was a mere ten feet off the side and inching nearer. The GShG roared, but it was caught on an angle so its fire could only just graze the gunship's belly.

Sam got an idea. She hastily grabbed three inactive hopper mines and stacked them in her arms like dinner plates. They had been painted either orange with a Lambda, or yellow with a smile on the bottom.

The synth thrashed its body; it pressed its flank against the force field - the whole helicopter tilted. Sam stumbled and fell off her feet, but with a panicked flailing of arms managed not to drop the hopper mines. A sharp grating sound came from out the door: the force field's metal railing was warping under the pressure.

With a tap of Marcus's fingers, the force field started sliding away, but jammed halfway across the door. Sam selected the topmost hopper mine, flipped a small circular switch on the underside, and tossed it through the half-open door.

In midair it activated - its light flashed blue - and it flew backward under the wind speed, but managed to dig its three spiked legs into the flesh of the synth. The gunship didn't even seem to notice. She hastily repeated the process for the next two mines.

The blue lights indicated the mines were neutral, so they wouldn't detonate on their own. They just sat there as the gunship leaned against the helicopter again; Alyx made a sound like panic as her hands flew over the dashboard to keep them airborne.

Thankfully, Barney was watching. He tugged from his holster his pistol and aimed it through the hole in the windshield. It was near impossible aiming in that wind, but taking quick aim and squeezing the trigger -

POW! the first hopper mine blew, and then so did the other two in rapid succession. The ship beside them wailed and burst into a fireball of orange flame; the force field slid back to cover most of the door but didn't have time to block the upper corner. A jet of fire curled along the chopper's metallic ceiling; it flew right over Sam's head by a foot but nailed Marcus. The dark, dense mop of hair burst into flame. He yelped with more surprise than pain; instinct taking hold, he collapsed to the floor and beat at his scalp until it stopped smoldering.

He tried not to think about the wine-red bits that clung to his hands; adrenaline buzzed in his ears and dulled the pain. With a frantic pawing under his seat, he injected a medkit into his neck, and then stumbled back to the force field's controls. His scalp prickled as the skin healed.

The engine audibly strained. The freezing wind screamed through the cracks in the windows and tore through the hold straight to the passengers' bones. The last gunship was catching up. Its movement through the air was worryingly reminiscent of a shark chasing down a stray fish. The rhythmic thumps of the photon cannon on the dark energy shield grew louder as the gunship grew closer.

And then, somewhere far below, a timer hit zero.

They saw the explosion before they heard it. Far behind and beneath them was a _flash_ of orange, smothered through the layers of fog like lightning behind a cloud. The shockwave cleared an enormous sphere of fog, and then came a muffled noise like a distant sonic boom.

Barney made a low whistle. "I would _not_ like to be down there."

But the most promising sign came from the last gunship following them, the one with a long yellow slash down its side. It slowed to a hover, and so did they. The synth glanced to the left, then right in a distinctly animalistic fashion. It then moaned far deeper than they'd ever heard a gunship - so low it vibrated the metal around them - and then soared away into the fog out of sight.

"It - it worked..." Alyx said.

Four pairs of eyes flashed to and from each other's faces as though waiting for confirmation.

Alyx's face broke into a wide smile. "_We did it!_"

The four of them broke into cheers.

"I can't believe it!"

"_Who's the greatest?_"

"That'sgottobethemostincredible-"

"YES!"

"_I am!_"

"-thinganyone'severdoneand-"

Still smiling, Alyx gazed through the windshield. The ground still wasn't visible, but a thin column of black smoke marked the spot the EMP had fallen. And, she knew, a crater where an Advisor or two had previously been.

Alyx, one hand maintaining their hover, turned in her seat to face the back as Sam lugged the door closed. "Is everyone in one piec - _whoa_." She caught sight of Marcus. _I _knew_ it smelled like burning hair in here._ She smirked. "I, uh, like the new look. Mismatched eyebrows suit you."

"Misma -" His eyes widened and his fingers flew to his face. "_Am I missing an eyebrow?_" He patted the strangely smooth skin over his right eye.

Sam, bursting into laughter, nodded mutely.

Turning back to the cockpit, Alyx caught her breath. "Okay..." She gave an exhausted laugh, mopping sweat from her face with the hem of her sleeve. "Let's _not _do that again."

Barney, for his part, once again had on his old goofy grin. "Alyx, I get the feeling you make a habit of tempting fate." He tossed her a headset and placed another pair over his own ears. "Whiskey-Foxtrot Mike-India-Eight to White Forest, Whiskey-Foxtrot Mike-India-Eight to White Forest," he said into the headset's microphone, "This is ex-Officer Barney Calhoun, better known as Professional Ass-Kicker Extraordinaire. Do you copy?"

"More like Professional Ass-Kisser," Sheckley's gruff voice growled through a thin layer of static, "though I've never seen anyone do it to themselves with such gusto before."

"Look in a mirror, buddy."

"Alright, alright," Alyx gently chided, speaking into her own headset's microphone, "don't make me separate you two." Changing gears, she said, "How are things on your end?"

"Well, our northern flank is -"

"Improving immensely!" Dr. Kleiner's enthusing voice jumped in. "Without that Advisor at the reigns, our foes are now as benign as ichthyosaurs with anodontia. And right in the nick of time, too. I say, my dear, you have nothing if not a sense of punctuality."

She smiled. "I'm just glad you're doing okay, Dr. Kleiner."

"Yes, yes, we're all pleased to hear from one another." The voice belonged to Dr. Magnusson, to the surprise of no one. "But there's no time to waste. You must return at once: I've just finished putting together -"

"Now _Dr. Magnusson_," Kleiner hissed. His voice was considerably harsher than they were accustomed to hearing from the normally gentle scientist. His words were somewhat muffled, as if he were speaking off the microphone. "I've told you it's unnecessary."

"You know as well as I what's at stake," came his equally indistinct reply. "They should at least know their options."

"Unnecessary and - and dangerous!"

Barney and Alyx shared a confused glance. The former clicked his headset microphone. "Whoa, docs, what's going on?" he butted in.

"Just return to base at once, Mr. Calhoun, Miss Vance," Dr. Magnusson replied. He turned away from the radio. "And we'll let _them_ decide."

"Oh, fie. Alright, then."

Then the connection flashed once more with static and the radio fell silent.

Barney shook his head and unceremoniously tossed his headset to the floor. He leaned back in his seat with his boots on the dashboard and his hands folded complacently behind his head. "Heh. Dontcha just _love_ how completely straightforward and un-vague the docs are?"

She rolled her eyes at the term 'un-vague', but didn't say anything. "C'mon," she said, "we have to go back to patch up the rotors, anyway. We might as well see what they're arguing about." With the push of a few levers and the flick of a couple switches, the helicopter's nose pointed north in the fog.

As the four of them flew back the way they had come, Alyx told Barney, "By the way, nice work with the gunpod. You use one before?"

"Nah, but it was nothing. Guns have what I like to call a 'point-and-click interface'. And that was some fan-_tas_-tic flyin' there, Alyx. A magician's nothing without his lovely assistant, right?"

"Watch it, Barney," she warned him.

"What? I meant Marcus."

* * *

><p>Within a few minutes Alyx and Barney had met up with Magnusson and Kleiner, and they were all sitting comfortably in the control room. Sam and Marcus were away, helping a few other rebels patch up the helicopter back in the hangar, as well as stock up on more supplies.<p>

The control room itself bore scars from the battle not too long ago. Through its shattered edges, the tall window overlooking the secondary silo let in a breeze, oddly calm and warm when compared to the high altitude atmosphere Alyx had just experienced. It didn't look like there was a single piece of hardware that wasn't burned, chipped, or on the opposite side of the room in hundreds of little pieces. A red dribble of blood stained the floor beside Alyx, while a pool of yellow, the larger of the two, was in another corner. She wondered, not for the first time, whether Uriah had made it out or not.

They were all scattered around the control room. Alyx leaned against the console, one hand absently tracing the dents where the hunter had fallen into it earlier. Barney stood with his hands clasped behind his back: a habit from his security guard days he'd never broken. Dr. Kleiner sat in a steel chair beside his colleague, who stood behind a small table with his back to the window and looked every bit like a professor about to launch into a lecture. With an air that said he was fully aware he was the center of attention, he gestured to a small, featureless metal device on the table which was roughly the size and shape of a deck of cards.

"This," Magnusson began slowly, "I believe, is why the Combine organized today's assault." He paused to let that sink in. After a moment, he explained, "Although rather unimposing in appearance, this ansible allows us to control the satellite array which is preventing the formation of another superportal."

Alyx leaned forward, eyes wide. "Are you _serious?_"

Dr. Kleiner nodded solemnly. "Quite, I'm afraid. My colleague and I have reached the conclusion that their intention was to destroy this device, and thereby seize the opportunity to open a gateway to the Combine homeworld. Presumably using one of their smaller bases of operation around the world, of course."

Barney softly whistled.

"My god..." Alyx slowly shook her head.

"Y'know, I hate to be 'that guy'," Barney said, "but why don't the Combine just launch a coupla missiles at the satellite? I mean, don't the evil, invading aliens have _spaceships?_"

Alyx knew the answer to that one. "Because it's not just one satellite they'd have to take out, but the whole array," she explained. "It has dozens of satellites, maybe a hundred or more. And all of their orbital coordinates were at old Black Mesa, which-"

"- which is a radioactive glass crater in the middle of the New Mexico desert," he finished for her. He subconsciously rubbed the knuckles on his right hand, grimacing at unpleasant memories. "Yeah, I remember."

She thought aloud, just to make sure she understood. "So if they want to phone home for reinforcements, it would be a lot easier for them to just go through us and destroy that remote... for now, at least." Her eyes flashed to Dr. Kleiner. "Did I get that about right?"

He nodded. "Perfectly, my dear."

"That's a good theory," she said, and she meant it. But something was keeping her from celebrating just yet; their explanation seemed off, somehow. "But there must be more to it."

"What do you mean?" Dr. Kleiner asked.

"Well..." She thought back, tried to pry at the feeling of uncertainty. "Here, in the control room earlier. There was this hunter, and it seemed to - I could have sworn it went directly for the EMP, as if it knew what we were planning."

"There was that shield scanner," Barney put in. "Maybe it was floating there five minutes, heard our whole conversation."

"_Can_ shield scanners hear things? And twenty feet away, through a sheet of glass?"

"Just brainstorming."

"And there's something else," she continued, remembering, "someone told me before we left that the ambush came from the lower levels of the base - from _inside_. I don't even understand how something like that can happen."

Dr. Kleiner clarified, "Oh yes, we've just received word on that: while you were gone, a scout team discovered an abandoned supply tunnel from a basement floor, its door broken open from the other side."

"Right," Barney added, voice hollow and eyes far away, "it opens up on the other side of the hill..."

"And _how_ did the Combine find out about the tunnel?"

The old scientist just sighed, resigned.

"_I hope I'm not interrupting your little game of Twenty Questions_," Magnusson resolutely launched back into his lecture, "but back to my _point_. A few hours ago, I had the ingenious idea of how we might double our chances." He produced from his lab coat a similar device to the one on the table. This second one was slightly larger, though not by much. It, too, was a simple, buttonless metal box with only a single outlet for a plug. "In what little time I had available today, I managed to scrounge together a very simple quantum circuit."

"Yeah. _Real_ simple," Barney remarked.

Magnusson just glared at him and continued. "_As I was saying_, these two devices are now entangled via a quantum relay. In layman's terms, the only way the Combine would be able to disrupt the resistance's control over the satellite array would be to destroy _both_ these two ansibles."

"Hey, that sounds great." Barney nodded his approval.

"Yeah, I agree," Alyx said, turning to Dr. Kleiner, "so why were you two fighting earlier?"

His lips pressed into a hard line without response.

"Well, it's obvious, isn't it?" Magnusson answered. "There's not exactly any point in having two ansibles if we'll keep both here, is there?" He held out the new device to her. "Quite simply, it's far safer to put as much distance between these two as possible; and you and Mr. Calhoun here _are_ headed to a rather remote corner of the world."

"Hold it," she digressed, "you want _us_ to take it?"

"A ridiculous idea, I agree!" Kleiner said as he snatched the device from Magnusson's hand. "Surely we can just give it to someone else!"

"To _whom?_ A traumatized refugee? A doddering old scientist like yourself? Some random rebel we've never met before who might very well be a double agent - I don't think so! Now you just tell me what's the _point_ of Alyx and Barney being the resistance's top agents if we don't _use_ them for important missions such as this!"

Kleiner glared at him over the rim of his glasses. "And _I_ maintain this plan of yours will only draw more attention to them! I'm sure Daniel or Noriko will turn up soon enough and we can just ask them when they arrive - their mission is dangerous enough _as it is_, and you intend to -"

Alyx stood up straight and spoke over him, "Dr. Kleiner, I think we should listen to Dr. Magnusson."

"_What?_"

"We shouldn't put all our eggs in one basket. We'll take the ansible as far as we can then leave it in a safe location, where it won't be found by the Combine; you know it'll be in good hands 'til then. And besides, they won't even know we have it, so they'll have _no_ reason to follow us. Barney, back me up on this; what do you think?"

Barney's eyes flickered to her but then settled back on Kleiner. He leaned forward and said in a surprisingly gentle tone, "Doc, it'll be fine; Alyx knows what she's doing. You _know_ that."

"I..." He wrung his hands. His eyes met Alyx's, almost pleadingly. "Are you quite sure, my dear?"

"I don't see anyone else leaving here as quickly as we are." Without realizing it, Alyx's fingers went to the pendant around her neck. She gave him a soft, reassuring smile. "Don't worry."

He searched her face a few more moments to detect fear in her expression, but then finding none he looked down at the ansible. With a reluctant nod, he wordlessly handed it over to Barney.

"Oh and also," Barney added, "docs? While we're all here, I'd pretty seriously recommend evacuating the outpost. I mean, yeah, it's served you well, but with, what - _two_ major attacks in under two days? It's pretty goddamn clear the Combine know where you are."

"Yes, an excellent suggestion, Barney," Kleiner agreed. "It's certainly been made abundantly clear that White Forest is a safe haven no longer. As soon as I've seen the two of you off, I shall make another bulletin organizing the exodus which is sure to ensue."

Alyx nodded. "Yeah, I know there are a lot of people who need medical attention, not to mention the destroyed barracks and sawmill. Plus," she added, rubbing her arm awkwardly, "I'm _pretty_ sure the water tower's busted."

Magnusson cut in, "Alright, then! Now, I believe the only matter left is who should take the _original_ ansible. This one, at least, must stay with our scientists so we can retain control of the array."

"Perhaps you should take it, Arne," Kleiner suggested. "It is, after all, your device."

"On the contrary, I believe it should go with you." He once again paused for dramatic effect. He put on an air of light martyrdom and said, "Objectively speaking, you are free to move about willy-nilly to a safer locale. _I,_ however, will need to stay to get my work here organized for the trip, which will no doubt take a few days. White Forest _is_ my lab, after all, and I have no intention of leaving my research behind."

"Fiddlesticks. Very well."

Magnusson handed the small, compact ansible to Kleiner and said, "Watch it. It's heavier than it looks."

"As it should be," Kleiner responded, grasping it firmly. "It carries nothing less than the weight of the world."

* * *

><p>They spent little time wrapping up a couple more loose ends before the meeting broke and they all started heading off to the hangar.<p>

Kleiner pulled Alyx off to the side of the control room as the others continued to the platform. "This will take but a minute, my dear. I merely wanted to give you this." He presented to her an old, faded, black-and-white photograph. She immediately recognized the mother, father, and infant in the picture.

"Oh..." She struggled with indecision for a moment, but then gently pushed it away. "No, Dr. Kleiner, it might get lost, or damaged, or -"

"Yes, that is a distinct possibility, and precisely why I neglected to offer it to you previously. But while you were fighting out there, I-I realized something. The only alternative would be to keep it here, with my own old self, and - well..." He glanced off to the side window. For a minute, Alyx got the feeling they were seeing the same scene: the day before, all of them gathered here in joy to watch the rocket launch. Her dad, vibrant and hopeful. "... And that just wouldn't be right, now would it?" He placed the photograph in her hands and clasped his own over hers. "Regardless of what _could_ happen, you _should_ have it."

Slowly, she took it from him. "I don't know what to say," she admitted.

"Oh, just _do_ be careful out there, Alyx." His worn, familiar face bore traces of paternal worry. He fiddled with his glasses as he said, "I... well, I just wouldn't be able to bear it if you - or if something were to... What I mean to say is -"

She just smiled and leaned forward to plant a kiss on his bald head. "I love you, too, Uncle Kleiner."

It was a nickname she hadn't used since she was a child, and he clearly remembered it. He gave her a tearful smile and wordlessly patted her hands, and then turned away to face one of the consoles.

"Be with you in a moment, my dear," he said, waving her on.

Alyx understood. She gently folded the photograph along the worn seams and tucked it into the inside pocket of her jacket.

Through the door to the landing pad, she could see Barney waiting for her. His face broke into a mischievous grin as she was emerging from the control room.

"Hey, Alyx," he said in an unconvincingly innocent tone.

"All right, what have you got plann-OH MY GOD!" She leapt back three feet in horror when she saw a strider standing not twenty feet away from the landing pad. Adrenaline hit her system like a wrecking ball and her hand flew to her pistol. Her mind sprinted: _there's no cover it's going to open fire soon everybody run for your lives_ - wait why is everyone... laughing?

Alyx held a hand over her pounding heart and looked more closely at the strider. It was upright, but perfectly still; after a couple stunned moments, she noticed it wasn't standing, but hanging limp from one of the trees. It was _dead_, she realized. Its three legs didn't even reach the ground. It was exactly the opposite of the dummy strider from earlier, she noted.

Two rebels in bloodstained gear were sitting high up in the air on a branch of the same tree. "Can you believe it?" one of them laughed. "A gunship actually just _dropped_ this sucker right out of thin air - it was awesome! I swear, the buggers just went _nuts_ after that bomb went off."

"Yeah," Barney gloated, brushing his fingernails on his lapel, "I don't want to brag, but it was a remarkable act of heroism. Should be remembered for the ages."

"Oh _please,_ Calhoun, climb off that stick up your ass."

"Hey, I'm not the one sitting on a tree. Though I gotta admit it was worth it just to see this kid's reaction!" he said, jerking a thumb in Alyx's direction.

She was about to retort, but the man in the tree beat her to it.

"Don't look so cool and collected," he said. "When you saw Cat you shrieked like a five-year-old."

"Yes, well..." He cleared his throat awkwardly. "I was attempting to communicate with it in its native tongue."

"_Sure_."

"Wait, wait, wait..." Alyx quickly backtracked. "Cat?... _You named it Cat?!_"

"Well it's in a tree! And what the hell _else_ were we supposed to call a strider, _Dave?_"

Alyx wordlessly groaned and made a beeline for the hangar. As she marched past Barney she shoved him. Hard. "That was _not_ funny."

"It was a little funny."

"Not. Funny!"

He sighed, rubbed the back of his neck as she walked away. "Alyx," he called. She turned in the door to the hangar. "_Sorry,_ kiddo. Shoulda warned you."

She only nodded in response, but seemed to accept.

He leaned against the railing and admired the view. It was late afternoon by now, so the valley was one big green and gold glow. There were a couple slate grey smudges marking smoldering buildings and the burning carcasses of synths; from this distance, humans were just ant-sized specs, but it looked like things were winding down. He breathed deep of the fresh air and soaked up the wide open sky, the fog finally gone.

He should probably cut the kid some slack. Losing a parent was never easy.

* * *

><p>In the hangar, Alyx and Dog made their goodbyes. His electronics made a high-pitched whimper as she told him what was going on.<p>

"... so I need you to be a good boy," she finished. "Take care of everyone while I'm gone."

She bumped her forehead against his optical lens and held him there for a few long seconds. Finally, she broke the pose. "Stay safe."

She hopped into the helicopter to find the repairs completed; inch-thick plastic sheets had been screwed over the smashed windows, and the rotors and engine had been tuned, among other things. Sam, only barely visible in the back behind the piles of crates, had clasped across her eyes a pair of plastic laboratory goggles and was scribbling down on a notepad everything they'd stocked. Barney was up front in the cockpit, duct taping the ansible to the underside of the dashboard. Marcus was nowhere to be seen.

Alyx reached underneath the starboard passenger bench and pulled out her rucksack. She admired the photograph for several long moments. There was herself as an infant in the arms of her mother: the woman who wore the same pendant that now hung around Alyx's neck. And behind them both stood her father. She'd always teased him about looking stiff in this picture; he'd always said it was because the photographer had tried to take that picture for ten minutes but a _certain_ young lady would never look at the camera.

She hid a small smile behind her hand at the memory. But soon the happy thought reminded her of the deep pain in her chest and she buried her head in her arms. A knot constricted painfully, like she was a spring being wound tighter and tighter until her whole body could do nothing but tremble. She felt like crying but she couldn't - it just _hurt_.

So she forced herself, like earlier, to breathe. The breaths wavered, but cleared her head a little. She furtively glanced over either shoulder to see if anyone had noticed her. To her relief, Sam was still in the very back and Barney was lounging in the cockpit.

Moving quickly now, she slipped the photo flat into a small plastic bag. Just as she was about to tuck it into her rucksack, she kissed it.

She'd never had anything of her mother but stories, her necklace, and this picture. But at least she'd had one hell of a good dad.

She was about to join Barney up front when something caught her eye in the bag: something unfamiliar and round. There hadn't been the chance to go through her bag since before she and Gordon had had that conversation in the garage. She reached for it out of curiosity.

It was a gold apple.

* * *

><p>Marcus appeared a few minutes later carrying four parachutes. He wordlessly deposited them in the cargo hold and strapped himself into his seat with a mildly smug look on his face.<p>

With his appearance, they were all ready to get going. He and Sam sat on either side of the passenger bay while Alyx entered the cockpit again, this time to find Barney once again reclining in the copilot's seat with his feet up.

She placed the apple on the dashboard, a large, crisp bite freshly taken out of it.

Barney didn't seem to notice. Instead, he greeted her with: "Hey, kid. Before it's too late, you remember our conversation in the control room?"

She forced her tone to be light. "Which one?"

"You know which one."

The images drifted back to her: panicking about the Combine, the things he'd said, the weight in her chest momentarily pulling her under. She looked down at her hands in her lap.

"You given it any more thought? 'Cause right now, it's now or never."

She took her time, counted her breaths. In the early, dark hours of the morning when she hadn't been able to sleep, her seams had been threading apart. She'd confessed as much to Gordon, and accidentally exposed it in the control room, but had kept it under wraps the rest of the time. And what had she done since then? Only fought an invasion in a battered jalopy. Only survived a collapsing water tower. Only dug her way through an entire army, reverse engineered alien technology, and successfully piloted an aerial battle. Only _done her damn job_. Maybe she was falling apart, but even that didn't seem to be able to stop her.

"Listen," she finally decided, choosing her words as they came out, "I know I was freaking out a bit earlier, but it's on the back burner now, I promise. You know, despite all that's happened? I still think everything's going to be okay. People need me, and I can focus on that." Through the widening hangar doors, humanity milled about, just like this morning before the attack. There were a few less and some were injured, but they were _still there_. "So you'd better not bring it up again," she jokingly threatened.

"You kidding?" He smiled at her - she might have been imagining it, but it looked a little like pride. "I was a _mole_ for fifteen years; I think I know how to not bring something up."

She smiled and began checking over the dials. White Forest was safe. Now all they need to do was fly north... And find Gordon. And save Dr. Mossman. _And_ destroy the Borealis. If she weren't so tense, she would have laughed. There was always more work to do.

A small party of people gathered outside: Dr. Kleiner, Dog, Dr. Magnusson, Sheckley, a smattering of other rebels, vortigaunts, and scientists, and -

"_Uriah!_" Alyx cried. Sure enough, there was a vortigaunt among the group in a slashed, yellow-stained lab coat - though he didn't appear to be injured at all. "You're alive!"

He raised a two-fingered hand as the helicopter rolled out onto the landing pad. Most of the group waved or shouted good luck as the rotors hacked through the air. Once they'd started gaining altitude and left the smoky air above the outpost behind, the radio fizzled awake.

"Ahem, testing? Testing?"

"Still hearing ya loud an' clear, doc," Barney said into his headset.

"Do you know where you're going to go, Dr. Kleiner?" Alyx asked.

"Ah, well, after a modicum of consideration, I have decided to set off toward the south. We hav - did you hear Tamika has turned up in one piece?" he interrupted himself.

A smile spread across her face. "Oh, good!"

"Yes, well, she arrived to inform me that the resistance has seized the southerly Klearbruk train track, for the time being at least. It's been suggested I strike out for the Athenian branch, in the city's ruins. It didn't seem to have too poor a laboratory, from what I can recall," he added stiffly.

"That's perfect. Dmitrius is sure to help you out after the whole Rusalka debacle."

Barney laughed once, humorlessly, at the memory. He abruptly interjected, "Do we have coordinates for gas-up stops?"

Dr. Kleiner responded, "Of course. We've radioed ahead to AEsir Base, so they'll be ready for your arrival by the time you've crossed the Baltic."

"Thanks," Alyx said. "After that, I was thinking Vanir Outpost, then Gota. I suppose we'll just have to play it by ear after that, though we'll do our best to avoid City 29 - and Lamant." The name made her shudder. "We're not exactly sure what we'll be passing over, so expect radio silence from us for a while. We'll talk to you again when we land. Take care."

"Alright then. Best of luck to you all, and such." With a soft click, the radio switched off to static.

She called over her shoulder to address everyone. "We've got the coordinates for Adlivun Electric, so I'll start making the route north. We'll have to stop for gas a few times, but other than that it shouldn't take us too long: about a full day of flying."

She once again faced the front windshield. The fog was thinning as they were leaving outland airspace, so the path ahead appeared clear for now. The ground was far beneath her, but visible: it looked like the fog had cleared up. She watched as the familiar forested mountains gradually smoothed out into long-abandoned crop fields and shanty towns. Eventually, even those made way for the craggy, noxious desolation manufactured by the Air Exchange and mining factories. From here on out, the only scenery would be the flat, cracked wasteland of a drained sea. Occasionally, a marooned freighter stood out rust red against the salt like a little flag in the white, urging her on.

Activity relaxed as the minutes passed and the world rolled by. With a sidelong glance at Barney, she caught him in a pensive mood. He was staring out the window without seeing anything, deeply lost in thought. His eyes were pinched together with exhaustion; he looked like he had gotten just about as much sleep as _she_ had last night.

She was suddenly reminded of that mysterious sheet of paper he'd hidden earlier, passing it off as _'Making sure we're prepared for the trip'_. The memory of how absent-minded he'd seemed, how quickly he changed the topic, how he had yet to speak a _word_ of what he'd been up to since the Uprising, struck her in full force. She'd learned long ago to trust her instincts, and as her panic and adrenaline dulled in the calm of the flight, they were definitely speaking up.

Barney had lied.

* * *

><p><strong>Negotiations<strong>

A force of nature sat, deliberating, in a dark cocoon of twinkling lights. Its thoughts came slowly but with great force, like a front of cold air coming off a sea. The creature's kind was accustomed to the slow march: they could wait generations or eons for a fault line to buckle or a civilization to ripen before striking - but when they _did_ strike, it was with unmatched speed and precision. Theirs was an efficient process, honed by millennia of trial and error. It was, in fact, almost perfect.

The metal shell was sealed shut for the journey, partially to shelter the creature from the toxic oxygen-rich atmosphere, and partially to allow it the isolation to think. The interior was punctuated by the gentle ebb and flow of pinprick, multicolored lights that flickered or waxed or waned in only a facsimile of random movement; they were really mimicking the thought pattern of the creature. Now, they shifted slowly but with great purpose. It did not regard them with wonder, and did not compare them to stars.

The creature now found itself in the unfamiliar position of contemplating the recent... setbacks. The assassination of the Administrator. The collapse of the central City. The shutdown of the dark energy communication network. And most recently, the failure to acquire the control system for the satellite array.

A fault in the railroad track jostled the pod, and the massive, oozing burn on one side of its grub-like body screamed under the motion. A wordless aura of anger thrashed the air outside the shell, and a few soldiers were thrown off the bridge. The injury had come from that sickening little device those _parasites_ had dropped from the sky; the other Syndicate member was obliterated in the blast.

The pain it felt was a weakness of the flesh easy to disregard and easier to disdain. That agonizing rake across its nervous system which tied its brain to its weak, limpid body was a reminder of its own imperfection: imperfection that needed to be cauterized, amputated, _corrected_. Except in _one_ place far away, Imperfection was everywhere.

Imperfection was in the inefficient, rusted railroad tracks the creature and its convoy migrated down. Imperfection was in this entire tiny blue planet from its pockmarked ozone layer to its cooling core, but particularly in its bipedal indigenous species. So the very concept that a few thousand of these unaltered, non-augmented animals were capable of gaining a foothold, however temporarily, was not worrying or irritating, but _inconceivable_.

And the creature intended to _ensure_ the foothold was temporary.

The lights danced as the numerous little bumps in the tracks faded into white noise.

Deep in the recesses of memory, there _was_ protocol for this situation, as degrading as it was to go to a lower species for help. There were only a few variables that needed ironing out.

The creature extended its proboscis, shimmering with slick, gelatinous fluid, and wormed it into a narrow slot in the wall. Three equidistant pincers surrounded the slot like corners of a triangle and clamped down into the tentacle hard enough to pierce the skin.

With a few quick instructions fed through its proboscis, the walls melted away into a program, a sort of virtual astral projection. The interior of the pod disappeared and another room took its place.

It was empty and dim except for the floor, which was clear enough to seem nonexistent. The planet miles below was covered by a forest of black spires; giant whale-like creatures flew between them, swirling the orange smog into little eddies and spirals.

And in the room dimly lit by the smoggy glow of an orange atmosphere, another force of nature was waiting.

This being was different. He was careful, very careful, to allow only a sliver of his form be visible - to allow only a single, hollow facet of his true appearance to attend the meeting. Communication with him was like speaking into a void: you could feel your words disappear across time and space, and then a response echo back through that same vast distance, translated through a puppet in a manner easiest to understand.

He was an agent, a broker of deals, and he was very good at his job.

"Now, I _knew_ we could come to an... a-gree-ment." His accent picked at the words like foreign objects. "Petty disa_gree_ments will get us nowhere in times like these."

The creature responded with a long, grating sound: an accusation.

"I wasss merely fulfilling the obligations of a prior _con_-tract; Mr. Breen knew from the beginning the _cost_ of his usurpation." The agent then smiled, but it held no emotion: just the movement of cold flesh beneath dead eyes. "And as for my terms, _khhh_ I hope you found them ve-ry clear."

A dissatisfied, animalistic groan shook the air.

"Surely the _time_frame is of no con... sequence to one such as yourself."

The large, grub-like creature circled him. In the program it was uninjured, unencumbered by life support, no more and no less than exactly what it was supposed to be: a perfect cog in an unstoppable machine. It made a short query.

"My c-colleague will be of. No. Import. I have made certain of that." His cheek twitched, like a corpse's face receiving an electric shock. His fingers shifted the briefcase at his side and he changed the topic. "There is still the un_sight_ly issue of payment? Your _re_quest does not come cheap, so I am afraid I will have to _insissst_ on collecting be-fore-hand."

The creature's temper flared with primordial impatience, enough for a few glitches in the program to appear. Patches of void flared into and out of existence like baubles of distortion suspended around the space.

"Hm... Very well. _Af_ter. Will that be all?"

It didn't respond immediately, but turned its focus through the floor at its home world churning away. Down among the black spires, there was no use for the broken or flawed; perfection, contribution, was the only option.

The Advisor agreed.

The hand of the broker - who was in reality no more than an empty, three-dimensional frame of light given the semblance of standing on the floor - grasped the knot at the base of his throat, and gave it a tug which matched the self-satisfied smirk sitting beneath two reptile-green eyes.

"Then it's a _deal_."

In a dark cocoon rolling down a railroad track, multicolored lights began to quicken.


	10. Dynamic Equilibrium

_[There's an official tumblr for Between Minds, because that's something people do, right? Check it out, or not! Between-Minds-3theCaptain dot tumblr dot com, because I'm unoriginal like that. Ask questions, get updates, all that jazz.]_

* * *

><p><strong>Dynamic Equilibrium<strong>

_A little knock interrupted the counselor's thoughts. She shuffled papers across her desk and said, smiling, "Come in!"_

_It took a few slow seconds for a shaggy, near-red head of hair to poke around the door, followed by a pair of wide green eyes. The child entered the room and hopped up onto an empty chair on the other side of the desk, swinging his legs in unison._

_"Now," she gave him her well-practiced stern look, "is there something you want to tell me?"_

_He glared into the carpet and shook his head._

_Her lips pursed into a point. "Mr. Shultz told me you cheated on your quiz today."_

_"I didn't cheat." His head was still facing the floor, but his hand balled up into an adamant fist. "I didn't!"_

_"Now, now," she soothed, "there's no need to get upset. He heard you tell your friend you didn't study, and you got every answer right. I understand it can be hard, but cheating -"_

_"I just - remembered it!" Angry tears were welling up in his eyes. "I don't know, I just did. I looked at it and my eyes took a picture and I remembered it."_

_"Really?" Her eyebrows knotted together. Her fingers tapped the desk as she thought. On a whim, she rifled through a drawer and pulled out an old Polaroid. "Look at this. I want you to take a picture of it with your eyes, just like you did with the test."_

_She watched the boy hold one corner of the picture as his eyes widened and flitted back and forth across the surface, his face an eerie blank slate._

_Then he was done. He handed it back and she held it up to her eyes, its back to him so he couldn't see. "Alright. Tell me, what was in the photograph?"_

_"A house."_

_"Good," she nodded. "And how many people are there?"_

_His eyes stared at something invisible in front of him, as though the photo were still there. "Four. And a wolf."_

_"That breed is called a husky. What color are its eyes?"_

_"Left one brown, right one blue."_

_"How many windows does the house have?"_

_Chubby little fingers counted them out. "Nine."_

_"What does the tall man's shirt say?"_

_He squinted. "I can't pronounce it."_

_"Spell it, then."_

_"A. G. S-C-A-B-E-I-O-U-E-I-G-H."_

_She laughed in disbelief, setting the photo back down. "I'm sorry Mr. Shultz accused you of cheating, sweetheart. You can go back to class now. I think I'll make a quick call to your parents."_

_"Am I in trouble?"_

_"No, no. In fact, I think they'll be proud of you."_

_As he opened the door to leave, she cooed, "You have a rare gift, Gordon. You should feel blessed."_

* * *

><p>"Hands in the air!" The distorted bellow of an Overwatch soldier barked at him just as the last wisp of energy from his teleportation faded. "<em>Now!<em>"

Gordon obliged like moving through water, but his mind sprinted. A ring of soldiers surrounded the small chamber he'd arrived in, a tall cylinder of clear material; an automated system raised it into the ice blue dome of a ceiling. More held their guns at the ready in clusters around the room, which was spacious, circular, and walled entirely by windows gazing out on a vast white expanse. The suddenness of teleportation still jarred him: there was no getting used to it.

_Shit_. Fifteen in total. Most were in standard armored uniforms the color of soot with blue goggles embedded in their gas masks, but one, two - _three_ were Elites: white armor, their masks defined by a single, giant red lens. The entire Overwatch was known for its efficient brutality, but the Elites were better equipped, better trained, better programmed.

"Step out of the chamber." One of them beckoned him forward. "Slowly." The Elite's words, like the rest of the Overwatch, were a warped growl. Inhuman.

_Double shit_. The ring of soldiers around him constricted as time caught up to him; they pressed the barrel of a gun into the nape of his neck and confiscated his weapons - even his gravity gun and crowbar - with rough movements, shuffling him across the room.

"Anticitizen One contained," one of them barked into a handheld radio.

"Good," the response came. It sounded like the Dispatch voice Gordon had heard drifting off odd broadcasts and APCs, its pathological efficiency never faltering. But this didn't sound like a simple computer repeating recordings. This was... _awake_. "Escort him to the Supervisors and await further orders. If he is ever with less than a ten-man guard you will, every one of you, answer to me."

The cylindrical portal chamber lowered back to the floor. Flashing lights came to life around the circular room as the hum and grind of the machinery sped up.

"Another incoming transmission, Consul." The Elite again. "What should we do with who comes through?"

The world stopped. Alyx's final words echoed back to him: _I'll be right behind you, Gordon!_ He could see her, less than a minute ago, with her fingers crossed for luck and giving him a particular smile. She had no idea what was waiting for her.

"_Cauterize_. _Disinfect_," the voice clipped, and the radio fell silent.

Gordon's guards began ushering him across the room. His head was down in a facade of submission, but in reality he tensed, felt energy build up in his limbs, and waited for the soldier on his left - the one that stood between him and a long row of counters which could serve as cover - to slip up. The mechanical humming of the incoming transmission hitched up an octave, and the troop glanced aside for a fraction of a second.

Too long. Gordon's armored shoulder tackled into kevlar, and in the same motion he wrenched the pulse rifle from the soldier's hands. With a tap of its secondary trigger he launched a dark energy sphere, which bounced from one troop to another like a pinball, disintegrating them into clouds of sparks as he ran for cover.

Gunfire behind him felt like a drum solo of full-force punches to his back. His shield glimmered like an electric aura around him; although it deflected the path of the bullets into wide arcs, it channeled some of the opposing force into himself.

Throwing himself behind the waist-high controls, he knew he only had moments, which meant a choice. He could get to the doors and escape, help out Dr. Mossman, do the whole Borealis-hero thing. Or he could do - he didn't know, _something_ - to keep the Combine from getting Alyx with her stupid headband and her damn smile -

He made a sound of pure exasperation - mostly with himself - and slipped a hand into the compartment at the small of his back to pull out an orange-splattered canister. _You didn't take my grenades, you fuckers!_ It flew in a curve through the air, then shattered the tall cylindrical portal chamber in an orb of flame.

Amid the thunderstorm of approaching boot falls, he saw to his relief not a single wisp of blue energy in the teleporter: only green. The transmission hadn't started. _Thank god,_ he thought, and something hard cracked against the back of his skull.

_Triple shit_.

* * *

><p>Chell didn't consider herself a poetic person. Thinking up pretty ways to describe something was a waste of mental energy, energy better spent solving puzzles and fighting giant robots. So when the mouth of the vortex snapped its jaws around her and shut out the ambient light of the Aperture Science dry dock, she didn't bother trying to articulate the experience to herself. In fact, she took every part of it - her molecules separating like a pile of sand hitting concrete, her consciousness as suspended as her disbelief - and tucked it away into the little folder in her brain she kept all the other redacted information of her life.<p>

So she wasn't a poetic person. But it turned out she didn't have to be, because when she felt a solid surface under her back and opened her eyes, she found herself in the mundane-est of the mundane situations.

Chell awoke in a wheat field.

The earth beneath her was... warm. And scratchy from undergrowth. Tall, untended stalks of wheat swayed and whispered secrets in the breeze. The sun sighed heat onto her from a sky that particular shade of blue you could just get lost in - there were even goddamn birds chirping. The world was, in short, one big gold glow of summer.

What the actual fuck.

"Hey! You there!"

Leaning her head, her adjusting eyes watched a limping silhouette of an approaching person.

"Wait a minute, now, aren't you - how'd you drift all the way out here?"

Something tickled her wrist - a bug was crawling over her bare skin, exactly where her wrist strap should be.

And then a sound she hadn't heard in a long time: her own voice, from her own lips.

"This is a dre-"

Her eyes snapped open - _but weren't they already open?_ - somewhere completely different, somewhere dim, manmade, and cold. This time, she wasted no time leaping to her feet, even if the blood drained from her head. The navy spots on her vision disappeared, and she realized how ridiculous the dream had been: she may have recently fallen through a wormhole after helping a wizard and a little girl possessing a demon, but _wheat?_ Nah, that was just silly.

This new room was a dome of plaster and concrete, near empty save for two waist-high consoles along the walls, a few scattered chairs, and a - _whoa_. Aiming down from the ceiling was some stalactite-like device, its surface all coppery and its point shooting off arcs of electricity like a Tesla coil.

Chell's heart dropped into her toes. This was some sort of experiment.

"Oh my god!"

The world wasn't entirely still yet, but she could make out two figures, each with an alarmed expression and each approaching her. The image swayed, but one symbol stood out to her: one of the figures had an orange lambda symbol painted on their clothes.

She took the warmth, the hope that spread through her at the sight of other people, and dumped a bucket of cold cynicism on it. Human didn't mean good, and human didn't mean bad, but _these_ humans were peering at her like scientists at a rat in a maze.

And she was _not_ doing that shit again.

There were two exits: an arched steel door on one side of the dome and a pair of white double doors at the other. The latter looked more promising, so made two quick shots of her portal gun: a blue mass above the double doors, an orange puddle at her feet, and -

The portal energy splattered and dissipated against the surfaces. Nothing happened.

"_Hey, wait!_"

Whatever the walls and floor were made out of, they didn't support portals. So she ran. She dragged the pair of doors open and a moment later freezing wind hit her like a battering ram.

The world stretched out in front of her, a godforsaken Antarctic wasteland. So very high up, the sky was coated in clouds so smooth and thick that she thought if she'd been able to reach it, she could rap her knuckles against it like marble. The force of pure animal intuition was almost enough to push her back into the relative warmth of the testing room, but Chell was a force of nature all her own. With a surge of willpower, her long fall boots crunched into the top layer of snow one after the other and didn't stop until she'd reached a landmark.

Leaning against a violent, upward jut of ice was a long-abandoned military tank, its canon glaring at the sky and its back hatch lolling open on the ground like the tongue of a corpse.

The cold soaking into her hair and clothes, she slipped through the hatch and, finding the space low enough she had to duck, curled up as tightly as she could into a corner on the floor. Every inch was crammed with hatches, periscopes, incomprehensible and long-dead controls. Time had turned the interior into a wintery cave; the cushion of the bench against a wall had frozen into a solid block and icicles drooped from a series of tubes on a rack.

Shivers turning into hard shudders, she tucked her entire body into one of the uniforms: a thick, padded one-piece jumpsuit designed for the cold, the mottled camouflage pattern an assortment of white, grey, and blue. Her fingers, prodding the cushy fabric, traced out what felt like ceramic plates across the chest, back, and arms.

As heat spread from her torso... to her limbs... to her fingers, her mind started working better. The personality sphere was scanning the room with its large white eye.

_'u cold?'_ Chell scrawled into the panel on her wrist strap. It was more difficult through the glove, but at least it worked.

"Aperture Science technology," the sphere responded in its moderated GPS voice, "remains fully functional from 2 to 4000 Kelvin, approximately the range from the background temperature of space to the base of the Earth's mantle."

She raised her eyebrows at it.

The white eye darted to the side, too professional for an eye roll. "No, I am not cold."

_'date?'_ she scrawled.

"No thank you."

That made her laugh. Shaking her head, she tried, _'day? year?'_

"My internal clock has not automatically adjusted. To change date and time settings in the event of societal collapse, point my unit at the night sky so I might determine the passage of time by the change in constellations. If, in the future, the stars are A) dead, B) stolen, or C) sentient, please disregard these instructions."

Chell watched her breath suspend in little puffs in front of her face; it was clear she'd get nothing useful out of the personality construct. Unless...

_'reiner317'_

"Password invalid. Please keep in mind all administrative passwords are case-sensitive."

_'REINER317'_

"Password inva-"

Her index finger flicked a loose chunk of ice and it plinked against the iris, which made the sphere ignore Chell for a while.

This place sounded strange. Sure, there was the background murmur of wind, but you can always hear that if it gets quiet enough. Here, the ice would groan and crack at its own continental pace and, after a few minutes of silence, deep booms or the crackle of gunshots like a remote battle, barely audible across the distance.

Probably not a good idea to stick around.

Numerous scales, small and vast, tilted and re-aligned themselves in Chell's mind. On the one hand, taking care of herself all on her own was a proven system. It worked. No need to involve other people when they'd just rope her into their own drama. On the other hand, she wasn't overly fond of the prospect of dying, which looked pretty likely in this setting. If there were people this deep into the middle of nowhere, they must have transportation.

And then there was that symbol. Back in Aperture when she'd been escaping, she'd found that strange turret with a flickering light, which had spoken to her of things she didn't understand. It had said to watch for the lambda, and, well, here it was.

_So what, out of all the pros and cons, the final vote comes down to a deranged turret? Is that really the deciding straw?_

Off in the distance, gunfire erupted.

_Yes. Yes, it is._

* * *

><p>Whatever her feelings on other people, the warmth of the testing room was more than welcome. Her gaze was so locked onto the floor as she entered that the only thing she could see was the giant red <em>'2'<em> on the floor. Gathering her courage, she met the pair in the eye and forced herself to not look away.

A white woman. A black man. Both appeared older than herself, the woman more so. She held a bearing Chell recognized and immediately distrusted: _calculating_. Her chin was raised and eyes narrowed as though trying to determine whether milk had soured or not. Other details blurred past: her hair, auburn, was held in a large clip to frame a pale, ageing face while large hands held a tablet computer.

The man's eyes were more trustful, or at least _less_ _dis_trustful. He could be any random person passing in the street, but the slouch to his shoulders and the way he stood turned slightly to the side hinted he was a long sufferer, and survivor, of hardship. He wore a tattered blue jumpsuit and a Kevlar vest packed with ammo, and -

He had a gun. Not like an Aperture turret which just spat out whole cartridges with high air pressure, but a real, actual, _gun_. _This was a horrible idea I should have stayed in the tank_ - but she dragged her gaze back up to his. Scars or dark freckles lined the bags under his eyes.

"So..." He broke the silence with a warm, if authoritative, voice. "Do you speak or something?"

She considered it, she really did. But something caught the words before they could form in her throat, and a slew of excuses came to mind: out of practice, waiting for the right moment, cards close to your chest, and, other than the vague sense that a long time ago she _had_ spoken, the quiet assurance that she had always done it this way.

_Well, do something at least_. She locked up her facial expression and body language into the most neutral and confident she could manage; she just dragged a chair over to a grate sighing hot air into the room and plonked down, rubbing her hands.

They glanced at each other.

The woman came into Chell's field of view, though she didn't look up from blowing onto her fingers. Her eyes slid, not unkindly, over the features in Chell's face: near-black straight hair, sandalwood skin, tilted eyes. "Maybe she doesn't speak English?" she suggested.

Chell's responding glare was virulent enough to make the man chuckle.

"I'm thinking she knows what we're saying just fine," he said.

_This isn't working_. Just as she wracked her brain for a method of communication, the personality sphere at her hip blinked. _Of course_.

"Where am I?" the sphere repeated what Chell scrawled into the panel of her wrist strap. "What happened?"

"Oh, what a relief," the woman chuckled, a hand to her chest.

"You're in the Arctic," the man explained. "There's probably a prettier way of putting it, but there you go. Northeast Greenland National Park, actually, or whatever's left of it. My name is Leon, and this is Judith. Welcome to Adlivun Electric."

"More specifically," the woman - _Judith_ took over, "this room we're in - that machine up there - is called a siphon. It detects exotic matter. Do you...?"

She let the words trail off, evidently asking whether Chell knew what the hell that stuff was. Which she didn't. She just gave ol' Judy - presumably a scientist - a dry look and moved on to rubbing her nose.

"It does magic, but with the science label slapped on," Leon explained.

"Right." That made Judie laugh. "Well, these siphons detect it and teleport it here from other - well, from... _ahem_, parallel universes." Her face squashed up in expectation of an indignant response, but none came. After a few slow moments, Chell just nodded for her to continue.

"Ma'am?" Leo's tone intended to cut this short. "What we're saying is we tested out the device a few minutes ago and it found _you_. We didn't know it was a person, of course, let alone a living one, but there ya go. Now as you might imagine, that brings up a few questions."

"The first one," Judith said in a softening tone, kneeling on both knees to get on Chell's level, "is how you got to a parallel universe in the first place."

She chose her words with care, aware she could very well face charges for tampering with experiments. This conversation was rapidly devolving into an interview.

"Accident," the personality sphere translated. "Laboratory."

"So you were a test subject?" Leon.

She didn't hesitate giving a couple firm nods at that one.

"We don't know how long you've been in there, but I should warn you it could feasibly be a very long time. What's the last date you remember?"

That wasn't exactly a straightforward question. She had no idea how long she'd been sleeping in GLaDOS's test chamber, or how long she'd been in stasis in the Relaxation Center, _or_ how long she'd been in the Mystic Void of Nothingness just now. The only thing she _did_ know was the year it had been when everything had gone to hell.

With her fingers, she made a two, then double circles, and then a three and five.

"2008?" Judith repeated, eyes widening and rising to her feet. She and Leon shared a charged glance, one which worried Chell. "And... what month?"

Chell didn't like the way they were looking at her, like a guinea pig in an experiment. Slowly, she raised a hand, five fingers splayed.

That got a reaction.

"May 2008..." Judith breathed. Her head shook with disbelief.

"The Resonance Cascade?" Leon asked. "What does _that_ have to do with any of this?"

"I don't know."

"Ma'am?" He directed at Chell, the word briefly surprising her. "I don't know how to tell you this, so I'll just be blunt. It's September. September _2032_."

_2032?_ her mind echoed. That was... actually a little less than she'd estimated. Her mind tried to slide back to memories of home - how it had changed, what must have happened to everyone - but a needle of pain stabbed into her head behind her left ear and she banished the train of thought.

The pair were watching her for a reaction, but she gave none. "She seems real choked up about it," muttered Leon.

"And the other question..." Judith inched into Chell's bubble of personal space. "Is how you have exotic matter on you -" she reached down to grab the portal gun, and Chell snapped.

The next moment Chell was aware of, Judith was backed against the wall and she had the mouth of her portal gun pressed against the old scientist's neck.

"HEY!" Leon was shouting at her, pointing a pistol at her head. "CALM DOWN, what the HELL does that thing do?"

Chell grew aware of the snarl on her face and, piece by piece, managed to draw it off into something more neutral. Slowly enough that Leon would see she wasn't trying anything funny, she backed away from Judith and plopped back into her chair in front of the heating.

That was weird. It would probably be a good idea to apologize or something.

"I'm sorry," the sphere translated. The panel on her wrist strap was a couple inches in length, which meant she could only fit in short messages at a time. "Instinct. Protective. Tense." She fired the portal gun at her own leg to demonstrate: an intense but fleeting heat through the cushioning of the uniform. "Nothing. Harmless."

The two hadn't moved and continued to stare at her like a loose tiger.

"You speak English?"

The tablet computer broke out into a ringtone, which finally got them to move. They clustered around the communicator, but Leon didn't let go of the pistol.

"-ear me? Can you hear me, come in."

"Reese?" Leon smiled. "Glad to hear you're still in one piece! What's your status?"

"Well," the person called Reese answered with a note of hysteria, "they're still after us, which is both good and bad. Good 'cuz they're not after _you_. Bad because yeah they're after us, which sucks the sweatiest of all balls. Leila got those Bradleys running not a second too soon. We'll keep the chase up as long as we can, but there's no telling when they'll figure out you're not with us."

"I see." Thinking, Judith adjusted her hair clip more firmly against the back of her head.

Chell scanned the room, checking her exits by force of habit. A monitor on the wall made her pause: it was a video - live feed or looped recording she couldn't tell - of some sort of large, shadowed boat tucked onto an ice shelf. The name, _Borealis_, was the same as the life vests from that dry dock back in Aperture Science. Her eyes narrowed.

"Alright, then," she concluded. "Listen, I've been running some tests on the old research here and I think I'm on to something big; I need you to send over someone as soon as possible."

"No can do, Moss," Reese responded. "Anyone we send would lead 'em straight to you; Elin's driving like a maniac and it's all we can do to just _avoid_ them."

"This is more important than any one of us, myself included. It's not certain my transmission got to the Resistance at all; we have no way of knowing when or _if_ Alyx and Dr. Freeman will arrive. We have to make do on our own."

"Yeah, about that... the name of the game has changed. Vittus picked up the HEV suit's signal. _Doctor Freeman is here_."

"_What?_" Leon. "There's no way he got here that fast!"

"Well, at the very least his suit is. In AE's teleport room, looks like. Vittus added your com to the suit's secure channel."

"Why, this is perfect!" A laugh - the one you make when the stress you've been under lifts - bubbled through Judith's words. "He can help me modify the siphons; it shouldn't be a problem for him! I -" And then the stress came back, concern dampening her tone. "And Alyx? Is she here, too?"

"If she is," Reese said, "there's not a word on her."

"Well, what's he say?" Leon leaned in to the communicator while Judith was absorbed in her thoughts. They seemed to have forgotten Chell's existence entirely.

"Huh?"

"Dr. Freeman - haven't you contacted him by now?"

"Yeah, tried that, and there's no response." Followed by a mutter: "Not like he'd _say_ much of any-"

"Alright," Judith began stuffing things into a backpack, still speaking loudly enough to be heard over the com, "I'll make my way to him and try to -"

"_Doc_, don't be irrational," Leon stopped her, "it's _just_ a software packet; you need to be here for the final punch. Maybe I should -"

"Push there _and_ back through Lamant's entire army? There's no way you'd get back here in time to help with the transmission -"_  
><em>

"What, and _you're_ a better option?"

"You're deliberately misunderstanding me! I only mean that -"

"I'll do it."

The two fell silent to stare at the speaker: the personality sphere. Like one being, their heads turned from it to Chell.

She hadn't been able to follow everything, of course, but she'd gathered enough: they needed something done that they couldn't do themselves. She continued scribbling into her wrist panel. After a couple words she had to pause and wait for the screen to refresh.

"Help me... escape and... I'll do... this for you," the sphere repeated everything.

"Are you sure, ma'am?" Leon wasn't sure whether to look at Chell or the sphere. "The Combine are in a 'shoot first, ask questions later' mood. It's dangerous."

"Not a... problem." She hefted her portal gun to the military crest on her shoulder.

* * *

><p>Judith finished up her explanation as she spread out a map. Curling at the edges, it displayed in fading print a collection of buildings at the center labeled Adlivun Electric. About a half mile north was a tiny building on its own, and another one to the southeast and a third to the southwest: they formed the points of a large triangle around the compound.<p>

"In fact, we are here." She pointed to the southeast one. "Siphon 2. Siphons 1 and 3 are the other two points. And... well, since this map was created, some variation of cataclysmic event _split_ Adlivun Electric in half -" a pen drew a jagged line nearly through the center of the compound, "- and now the crevasse is a few hundred feet wide, several times more deep, and far too long to consider getting around."

"Which is unfortunate," Leon put in, "because Siphon 1 is on the other side. We won't be able to help you with that, so just trust the Doc; he'll find a way across."

"From what we've heard, Doctor Freeman arrived in the portal chamber of Adlivun, right at the center. Now, the Combine _will_ find you if you're outside too long, so you need to take a service tunnel; there's one from the central complex to each of the three siphons. Just stick to the tunnels and download the data at Siphon 3, then try to find some way to 1." She sighed with the exhaustion of summarizing quantum mechanics to a six year old. "Are you getting all this?"

Actually, Chell had lost track way back when alternate universes came up, but she'd never admit that. Keeping any trace of doubt from her face, her eyes bored holes into the map. Tearing a scrap from a blank corner, she scribbled down the instructions in their most basic format. _Use tunnel to center. Find Freeman. Go to Siphon 3, then 1._ That was all she needed to know: the bare facts of what she had to do. She didn't really care about why.

After a quick scribble into her wrist strap, the personality sphere translated, "Then I leave?"

Judith hesitated.

"Yes," Leon strode over. "If you can do this, then... We promise you'll get out of here when we do."

Chell's steel-grey eyes passed between their faces, letting them see her distrust. She'd heard the half-truth in there. She just didn't know what it meant.

Then she turned on her heel to approach the steel door. Fingers dancing on the handle, she didn't bother with goodbyes or wishes of luck. She just checked over her gear - data packet taped to her portal gun, personality sphere now muted and secure on her shoulder strap, uniform fitted nicely - and stepped into the tunnel.

They watched her disappear, frozen momentarily at the suddenness of her departure.

"Good luck!" Leon shouted after her. As usual, there was no response, just the sound of her fading footsteps.

Leon watched the girl leave, let the iron door shut with a decisive swing, and then went back to digging through the pair of duffel bags on the ground, once again inspecting every last item. Judith leaned against the console and couldn't bring herself to get back to work, so just stared at the pages of equations in the manual in front of her.

A flicker on her wrist caught her attention, and she fiddled with the bracelet. It was possibly the only thing she'd managed to keep with her since before the Resonance Cascade. _'PROGRESS,'_ that's what it said, engraved in gold on a chain. It was the one ideal that she, Eli, and Breen all shared; the one she'd hoped for so long that they could unite over. She had been trying so hard to set it all right, but it might be too late.

Around sunset last night the vortigaunt had bowed his head in grief and said that Eli was...

But that couldn't be true, not so soon after everything had come into the light. There'd been no time to make up for everything she'd promised him she would. All the years she'd survived and all the people she'd outlived pushed down almost enough to crush her.

"We should have been honest with that girl." Maybe she was just tired of deceit, but if they were sending her into a war zone she at least deserved to know the full truth of the matter.

The Combine had crashed their helicopter the moment they'd entered Adlivun Electric airspace. Either they won, or there was no getting out for anyone.

* * *

><p><em>Turns out<em>, Gordon thought as he was dragged by his forearms across the room, _when an Overwatch troop cracks the butt of his pulse rifle into the base of your skull, you do not pass out!_

His vision swam with a collage of nauseous colors as they shoved his body into some sort of small containment unit which felt like a vertical coffin. His arm reached out for any sort of handhold before they could close the lid and managed to nick his fingers into one of their masks - they struggled back and forth until a fist punted the bridge of his nose and he collapsed back. One of them slammed the lid of his unit and a lock clicked into place.

The lid on the upright coffin was clear, which meant that the soldier could see it when Gordon tasted blood on the back of his tongue and spat red saliva at him.

The soldier just shook his head and turned away, barking again into a radio. The battalion rearranged into a square, grid-like formation around him and, their legs stepping in unison, began marching through the double doors. There must have been wheels under Gordon's feet because the coffin glided forward, too.

The wreck of the portal chamber, all warped plastic and bits of metal, disappeared from view. He wasn't sure how he felt about destroying it now. Sure, Alyx was safe, but he'd also single-handedly prevented any hope of backup reaching him soon.

... But Alyx was safe.

Another exasperated groan. Was he really doing this? _Really?_ Of all the worst times in the world to -

They hadn't even known each other very -

You know what? Screw it. He tried to ram his shoulders or knees against the walls, but there wasn't any room; the containment unit, all metal and smooth edges, only gave an inch of spare space.

The painful brightness of the portal room gave way to a dim hallway, lit by patches of light from what fluorescent bulbs were still working. Someone must have gotten the power up and running.

The soldiers had distributed his guns between them; even his gravity gun glowed from one of their backs. An Elite turned his crossbow, jerry-rigged out of scrap parts and bungee cord, over in his hands and then broke it in two.

A sound like heartbreak left Gordon's throat. _My precious, precious crossbow! Rest in peace, friend._

The hallway, he noticed, was a helix: it sloped downward and in a constant circle to the left. It seemed to circle down around a wide central shaft like the thread of a screw. Along the inside of the curve, there was only one door per level, designated a scientific category. By contrast, the right wall along the outer curve of the hall had doors at random intervals, with signs saying things like 'Cafeteria,' 'Dormitory,' 'Garage,' and their Danish translations.

It wasn't too long before they began passing bodies. Still in lab coats or service uniforms, they appeared against the walls or just sprawled across the floor. They were so intact that Gordon at first mistook them for fresh; hair still clung to their heads, sometimes still in neat styles; their skin was, for the most part, intact, but pulled tight over clawed hands, bared teeth, and empty eye sockets until their bodies resembled leathery raisins. They may have been in the Arctic, but this was very different from simple freezing. They'd been mummified.

Which brought up a critical question. Where were the dead Xenians? He could only assume the scientists were killed during the Resonance Cascade all those years ago, when alien creatures were pulled to Earth through portal storms. But you would never see all these human bodies without at least a couple dead bullsquids or houndeyes as well. Which implied something else had killed them, something potentially worse.

Okay, so two critical questions. Was it still here?

They'd descended maybe a half-dozen levels when their path unexpectedly brightened; a chunk of the outer wall had fallen away. Freezing wind whistled through the opening.

They did one full circle deeper and found another, bigger, hole in the wall. Through the ragged edges Gordon could pick out the glow of a morning snowstorm and the foggy outline of a construction crane.

How could he see anything, let alone daylight? Weren't they deep underground by now?

By the time they'd made the loop a third time, the battalion marched to a stop in front of the hole, which was now ten feet wide and large enough for a clear view. The gap looked out across a sheer, thousand-foot drop into a crevasse in the glacier; although the snowfall was picking up and blurred the opposite side, scattered scraps of Combine tech stood out across the space.

There had been moving walls back in City 17 that crawled across the asphalt and consumed everything in their path, and it appeared this same pseudo-organic technology was being used here; a network of black metal vines creeped and connected across the wall of ice, knitting together and forming nodes for control centers. A dozen or so bridges of the same light-sucking metal extended across the distance from one wall to the other, extending like feelers of a poisonous vine.

And all of it expanded outward from an icebreaker ship with a rusty hull, waiting at the heart of the crevasse on an ice shelf for all of this time. In the shadow of the glacier, intermittent floodlights illuminated pieces of the ship: a towering antenna reaching into the sky, a crane on deck carrying a freight container with the Aperture Science logo, and the unmistakable word _'BOREALIS'_ on the hull. No one knew what it had hidden inside, but the race was on: humans or grubs. The ship was a postmodern ziggurat, and Gordon meant to Indiana Jones this bitch.

At the base of the hole in the wall, a knot of the same metal-organic material began to churn and then begin extending over the crevasse; the entire building rocked with tremors. Gordon's teeth clattered against his control; the hole in the wall widened as pieces of drywall collapsed; even the soldiers had visible difficulty remaining upright.

They intended to take him right into the thick of it, and his mind raced. If he could reach the grenades at the small of his back, which would be stronger: the container or his hazard suit? And what was the exact stupid/brilliant proportion of that idea?

The water main, a long pipe hanging from the ceiling, buckled and then with a high-pitched, grating sound it burst, gushing out a jet of water to the floor. The soldiers tensed as one, prepared to fight, but nothing came.

The bridge was about halfway across when the water main popped again, closer - and then a third time, nearly directly above their heads and close enough for droplets to splash onto the clear lid of Gordon's container.

The liquid wasn't what you'd expect in a residential complex: this bright, neon blue like the sign on a cheap motel, it began pooling around the soldiers' ankles as they waited for the bridge to complete.

There's a certain animal instinct that warns you when something is not quite right. It tells you the difference between fresh and rotten food, and scares the shit out of you when that tree out your window looks like a human face. The instinct had been programmed out of the Overwatch's consciousness so they didn't notice a small, crucial detail that could have given them a few moments' warning.

But Gordon saw it. And as soon as he did, his body temperature plummeted: although the hall was at a angle, the water wasn't flowing down. Eddies of current flowed around the battalion's ankles with predatory intelligence.

It happened in a second. The blue puddle on the floor flowed upward, twisting in the air, and congealed into a long, three-dimensional tentacle; its end formed a sharp point like the tail of a scorpion - and then it stabbed straight through the back of a soldier.

Chaos erupted. In the time it took the nearest troops to see what had happened and grab their weapons, an entire forest of tentacles rose up from the puddle on the floor and began the slaughter. A thunderstorm of gunfire bellowed in the narrow passageway, but lead bullets just passed straight through the gelatinous flesh and pulse rounds sizzled into nonexistence.

The first soldier to be impaled was lifted, screaming and writhing, into the air in front of Gordon's container - the tentacle clenched, and a scarlet mass of blood and viscera was sucked down the gelatinous tube into the puddle on the floor, and didn't stop until it had drained every drop of moisture from his body.

Gordon's senses shut down; he didn't feel like himself or in control, like he was watching everything from third-person: there was gunfire illuminating everything in nightmarish freeze-frames - there was a soldier trying to run only for a tentacle to snake around his leg and drag him back - there was another one, which sliced open a soldier's torso through the kevlar and buried its head into the chest cavity - and there was a man trapped in a vertical coffin, losing his mind trying to escape.

When Gordon, shivering and his head hot-cold like he had a fever, returned to his body, the bridge had stopped moving so the building as a whole was still, but a barrage of knocks made the interior of the containment unit deafening. The tentacles had circled it and were banging their scorpion-like heads against the walls, looking for a weak spot. Their neon blue flesh had been dyed into a dark, purple wine; dried husks of bodies littered the ground behind them.

One wrapped around the coffin and _constricted_ - a few seams and joints in the coffin snapped. Any moment now it'd squeeze through the cracks and suck him dry like a creamy nougat center, but instead it lifted the container into the air and flung him down the hall into darkness where it slammed into a wall. The welt at the back of his head screamed.

Phosphene flares across his vision. His reflection blinking dully back at him. White fog on the glass coming and going with his breath. And, in the hall, a sickly blue outline against the black, a tentacle crawled across the floor, coiled around the leg of the last Overwatch troop, and dragged it out of sight.

* * *

><p>Chell's view extended down a long, crooked tunnel of ice, about wide enough to accommodate a single car. She patted the data packet they'd given her, now duct taped to the side of her portal gun along with the note to self. Dim and forgiving sunlight glowed from all directions; she didn't so much as cast a shadow as she placed her feet one at a time in front of her. The floor, walls, ceiling - all blended smoothly into one irregular surface like a lake flash-frozen in a storm. The ice was so clear and pure the color bordered on mint green. Even her jaded ass could admit it was beau-<p>

_Thump_, her backside slammed into the ice, interrupting any nascent sentimentality. Her long fall boots had slipped. _Shrapnel cakes!_ she swore, rubbing warmth into her thighs.

Something was moving on her back. With a tug of her shoulder strap, she saw the machinations around the sphere's iris were sorta pinched together and... twitching?

_'Unmute'_

Instantly, the tunnel echoed up and down with laughter. Its iris and handles were crinkled up into an artificial smile. The sphere, surprised, collected itself and rearranged its features into a neutral expression. "Ahem. The use of caution would be recommended on icy walkways."

Narrowed grey eyes scrutinized the sphere, who was trying not to meet the gaze. Could there be more than meets the eye to the pumpkin-sized encyclopedia?

Chell grabbed a handle and threw the sphere as far down the tunnel as she could. But it was an _affectionate_ throw, a you-may-not-be-as-big-of-a-cold-hearted-moron-as-I-assumed throw.

"_AAaaa!_" it screamed as it shrunk into the distance, and then ricocheted against the icy walls; Chell giggled in response, something she'd forgotten she was capable of doing.

Rising to her feet, she was back on her way, and managed to get moving again with side-to-side motions like ice skating. She had a good rhythm going: kick the info sphere with the side of her boot like sports equipment, skate a while until she caught up, and then repeat. Each time, it struggled to maintain a passive expression.

She actually might have been a little more inclined to like it than Leo or Judy, just by virtue of it not being a person. People tended to toss Chell in a maze and poke her for a reaction. Though being a robot wasn't exactly doing it any favors, either. _They_ tended to try to bake Chell alive. You know what, if everything sentient could just stay 100000 feet away from her, she'd be happy.

When this was all over, she'd build a little shack out of scrap somewhere niiiice and quiet. Use a couple portals to bring in a water supply, and that would be the absolute last she'd mess with them. Somewhere she could change out of her sweaty overalls, without even a _single_ bottomless pit to fall into. Maybe in a golden lea, like her dream. Wide-open, with a view of the sky she'd never have to abandon.

It chewed her pride to admit, but she was pretty sure she _had_ met some good people before. They'd been kind and welcoming. It was such a long time ago, but what were their names...?

A wasp sting of pain pricked behind her ear, smothering the thought.

Maybe she just needed to befriend someone who was neither a person nor a robot. Yeah. That'd suit her perfectly.

She'd been making good progress like this for a while when something caught her eye and she let herself glide to a stop.

There was another one of those silver cracks, just like she'd seen in the dry dock. It looked like one of the hairline breaks you'd see in a mirror, projected in the third dimension. It extended up though the ceiling, near vertical. Also like the ones in Aperture Science, it was intangible; she walked straight through it and it felt no different than passing through air.

What the hell was it doing here? Back in the Borealis dry dock, a whole bunch of these cracks were spread out from that glowing-orb-of-death-thing, like the spot space had been smashed with a hammer. If this really was the same phenomenon, then logically this crack, too, began at _another_ glowing-orb-of-death-thing. But where? And why on Earth would these things be in the Arctic and in _Michigan?_

"Hmm..." She stepped through again, and wondered just _how_ similar it was. She lifted her portal gun, aiming the glowing end toward the seam.

"_I would not recommend that course of action!_"

Her gun fired a mass at the crack, and instantly a chopped-up mess of green energy stormed around it, thrashing light and noise into the tunnel and - then silence.

She covered her laugh with the back of her hand. This was _exactly_ like the dock.

"The use. Of caution. Would be. Recommended!" The personality sphere was stuck on its side, white light glaring at her.

She dismissed it with a wave of her hand. Whatever it may think, she wasn't an idiot; after being shuffled through testing chambers like a cow through a slaughterhouse, you learn to appreciate the value of 'nothing ventured, nothing gained,' even if that meant trying a few wacky things along the way. If Chell didn't have the 'try new strategies even if they are potentially dangerous' instinct, she would be _long_ dead.

_Will jumping through these portals launch me across the room or drop me to my death? Let's try it!_

_Will this High Energy Pellet bounce off the Companion Cube or burn through it and sear my head off? Let's try it!_

_Standing in the path of rockets and jumping out of the way at the last second is literally the stupidest idea I have ever had. Let's try it!_

And besides, the cracks weren't dangerous. She'd only gotten sucked into the Mystic Void of Nothingness after she'd shot that orb-of-energy thing, the Anomaly, as Mr. Johnson had called it. The cracks were fine: they'd just shout a bit and give glimpses of some other place.

She reiterated the rule to herself. Shoot the orb, get sucked into nothing, very dangerous, do not do again. Shoot the _seam_, it tries to open, doesn't have enough power, nothing happens.

Now that she thought about it, maybe it was just that simple. If you wanted something to do its objective, but _better_, you just throw more energy at it! She was no expert, but she was _pretty_ sure that's how Science worked.

_Blue - orange - blue - orange - blue_ - her index and middle fingers alternated the triggers as fast as she could press them and the crack stormed with green energy louder and brighter until some internal minimum was met, and it finally yawned open like pulling apart a seam in a piece of cloth.

_It's a portal_.

Not the neat oval portal she'd grown accustomed to, but a jagged tear across her path. And the world on the other side couldn't have been more different. Through the tear, the sky was a rich teal, clear as crystal like a tropical pool. Instead of one singular landmass, shards of land and rock floated through the air like flying islands, flowing on invisible currents through wisps of silver clouds. The atmosphere began seeping through the portal into the tunnel, and Chell closed her eyes to enjoy the warm, humid breeze. Wherever this place was, the air was breathable.

It was only once the seam shuddered back together and stabilized once more into a plain grey crack that Chell felt the look of pure wonder on her face. She'd seen more than her fair share of strange things, but they were almost never that pretty and non-homicidal.

She flitted her hand through the crack like passing your finger through a candle flame; last traces of warmth still lingered in the air. Pushing through the temptation to open the tear again, she looped the personality sphere back onto her shoulder strap and continued her skate down the tunnel.

Her mind replayed the scene over and over again. Back in Aperture, just before she'd discovered the Borealis dock, she'd seen a mural... one with a teal sky and silver clouds. The painter must have seen that world, too! But there was something else in the painting, too, something she couldn't quite put her finger on. She tried again and again to visualize it as she glided through the ice, but each time she got close another pinprick of pain nicked her head.

* * *

><p>"Gordon - wait, do I hold the button down or just push it once?" The recording of Alyx's voice then made a small, nervous laugh. "Okay, great. Gordon: we're not sure what happened with the prototype, but we're trying to figure it out as fast as we can. Unfortunately, the way things are going now we're going to have to take the helicopter like we originally planned, which means it'll take us an entire day to get up there."<p>

The familiar voice projected, tinny, from his suit radio and echoed coldly on the walls of the containment unit. It was a slow process calming his nerves after the creature's attack, but discovering Alyx's message had helped significantly.

"Just - _please_, do what you can to help Dr. Mossman, and try to get into contact with me. I'm sure _you'll_ find a way. And... take care of yourself."

As he listened a small, goofy grin pulled up the curve of his lips.

He let the recording loop again, and then once more because that little laugh at the beginning was fucking adorable. The moment _'take care of yourself'_ finished again, he clicked the connection off. Did any of Dr. Mossman's team get the recording? More to the point, were they still _alive?_ In a sick way, it really wasn't up to them. There was no way of knowing what twisted path that man in the blue suit was leading his friends, let alone himself.

_Shitdammit_. Whenever he tried to apply reason to that _thing_, he lost himself in the twists and turns. But now was as good a time as any, and he needed a good, lengthy puzzle as a distraction. So he closed his eyes and tried to think. _Let's go over the facts._

It had all started at Black Mesa - hell, you could fill a library with that preface - when the executive started appearing. He'd first been in the rail car opposite Gordon's, even in that mundane scenario distant from the world around him, just staring and watching. The man felt... _wrong_. Like a corpse stood upright, its eyes propped open to stare at you.

He'd been in the corner of Gordon's eye the entire 28 hours, untouched by the chaos around them. Then, in that factory on Xen when he'd struck the final blow against the Nihilanth, the business man had transported Gordon to some sort of ethereal rail car. He was given a choice: die fighting the abominations on Xen - or enter into employment. It would have been so easy to say no and die a hero's, a martyr's, death, but he hadn't.

Gordon had chosen the latter, and was now facing the consequences of that choice.

Twenty-four years in stasis passed like a forgotten nightmare, and then blinking into his senses he found himself on a train entering City 17. Just like at Black Mesa, the business man was watching around every corner.

And then... at the crest of the Citadel as Breen's teleporter exploded, the man froze time itself. He reported, almost boastfully, of how good of an investment Gordon was proving to be, while Alyx was stood frozen beside them and the explosion was a half-formed orb in the background. The world grew dark, and he was once again in stasis, merely waiting for his next assignment.

But then _something_ happened. Sinking again into the numbness of stasis, Gordon felt like something was pulling him, pulling him, from very far away, and then he found himself standing far away from City 17 and its troubles. A narrow coast of sand and sunlight wound lazily around him. An old man with a smile and a limp welcomed him to the village of St. Olga, and instructed him to do a bit more work. When Gordon had finished fighting off some soldiers a few minutes later, he regrouped with the old man, who clapped him on the back and congratulated him on a job well done. Then St. Olga dissolved away and...

City 17 materialized around him. There was Alyx, a statue, and the Citadel's explosion frozen in time, and the business man gloating away. Somehow, time had ticked back a mere few seconds, before the world had grown dark. Turns out a couple seconds were all the vortigaunts needed. Their skins glowing ultraviolet with power, they intervened and carried Alyx and Gordon to the base of the Citadel.

After that, the man was conspicuously, _loudly_, absent from Gordon's life. He and Alyx retrieved Dr. Mossman's transmission from the Citadel, delayed the reaction, and gotten the hell out of Dodge, all without so much as a glimpse of the man anywhere. At least, until that hunter mauled Alyx out of nowhere and the vortigaunts had no choice but to heal her. Then he'd stopped time again and whispered that phrase, _"prepare for unforeseen consequences,"_ to her and monologued for a while.

Gordon's eyes unfocused as he recalled what the man had said. He didn't remember every detail of his life; he had to purposefully store the moment in his memory for perfect recall, or "press record" as he thought of it. When he looked back, it really felt like he was watching a video in front of his eyes. He had thought it prudent to "record" all of the business man's speeches.

Now, in his chilly little coffin, he pressed a little play button in his mind and the words came back to him. In his implacable accent, that man began. He said that he hadn't been able to intervene until the vortigaunts were distracted healing Alyx. Then he mentioned rescuing her from Black Mesa as a baby: a claim which Eli later confirmed. Some of his final words ticked across Gordon's mind: _"Dr. Freeman. I _wish_ I could do more than keep an eye on _you_, but I have agreed to ab_ide_ by certain - ress-tric-tions."_

_Restrictions_. That must mean he'd made a deal at some point. But with whom - about what? And he didn't even _know_ what was up with all that St. Olga shit.

Gordon took a deep breath - fogging up the glass in the process - to slow the pace of his thoughts. He tried to put together his ideas. The man in the suit - he should really think up a snappier name, like Jacob or Scrappy McGee - made an agreement with _someone_ to not interfere after the Citadel exploded.

But now he was back. He had deliberately appeared to Gordon just before he'd stepped into the prototype room at White Forest, and mere minutes later Gordon was in Adlivun Electric, back on the job. Somehow, that must mean the gloves were off.

_What happened?_ He wondered. What had changed so that _He_ was free to interfere again?

A metallic _thud_ in the dark reminded him of how screwed he was. A following _thud_ betrayed its source: the ceiling.

_Shit shit shit shit shit -_

He tried, like before, to wobble side to side - to kick his legs against the lid - to reach his arms up to push but there wasn't enough space between his armor and the lid or -

Another _thud_, closer.

Why the hell had he wasted so much time this wasn't the time to think he should have been trying to escape not just waiting around and - !

The grate of a ventilation duct flew off its screws and out tumbled an entire person: someone with a military uniform, a soccer-ball-sized lantern at her hip on a strap, a device which looked a bit like the gravity gun around her forearm, and coated head to toe in a thin layer of dust.

Utter relief swept over him. He'd have gotten her attention, but she stood stock-still, giving the wall a long, intense stare. It was the kind of stare you'd expect to see on an action hero about to plot the bad guy's downfall, or on a wise senior contemplating life's mysteries.

"Aaa_**CHOO!**_"

And it was just a sneeze. As she wiped her hands on the same wall, Gordon thumped his armored arm against the lid. She must be part of Judith's team, there was no other explanation. Or, at least, very few other explanations.

She didn't flinch at the sound, but did tense into a more defensive stance; this was someone accustomed to the life-and-death. Her head swung round to face him, and on meeting his gaze didn't move.

This didn't feel unlike any number of other times he'd been saved - by Barney, by Alyx, by Dog, by a hundred rebels - so he looked to her expectantly as an ally, but the warm greeting didn't come. Her face didn't break into a welcoming smile and she didn't start prattling about what they were going to do. Her eyes just stared right back into his, the color of cold steel.

Any friendliness drained from Gordon's face. She _was_ with Judith, right?

Chell herself wasn't sure what to make of him. Her eyes slid over his form - he was all packaged like a mint condition action figure - in some sorta orange space-age getup. Why it didn't have a helmet was beyond her. And there was that damn lambda symbol again, but instead of painted onto a cheap jacket or something, this was emblazoned across his chest like a medieval crest. But more than that, there was something in the way he held himself, like he was a starved dog trained for the ring and wouldn't think twice about ripping her throat out. He seemed dangerous. If she was being honest, he creeped her right the hell out.

Wait, what was his name again?

Shuffling footsteps along with radio-altered voices up the hall made her turn. An idea: she scrawled into her wrist strap, _'can u'_ pause for the screen to refresh,_ 'c infared?'_

"Why _wouldn't_ I see infrared," the sphere monotoned, and scanned its eye up the hall. "Should I just tell you the results, or would you prefer a nifty tech upgrade which will come in handy on your little adventure, probably long after you've forgotten about it?"

Chell wasn't too sure what it was implying, but raised two fingers to indicate the second option.

Her wrist panel flared with light as strings of code flew across the screen; when it calmed, two red dots appeared on the emerald screen. When she turned in place, they gravitated toward a point up the hallway. Hm, they seemed to be growing larger.

_Crap_ they were getting closer! A few quick steps took her to the coffin door; a couple levers scraped in protest but managed to unlock the door and together, her prying and him pushing, the lid groaned open.

He stumbled out.

He tried to sign, (Thank you,) as an attempt at being polite, but she just grabbed a panel on his arm and yanked him toward a nearby door - as soon as he heard the boot falls rushing toward them, he followed suit and slipped into the room with her.

The room was a large circle the same size as the portal room on the ground floor. Desks had been pushed against the walls to make space for what lay at the center: hundreds of clear boxes were stacked into towers like miniature skyscrapers and alleyways. And every single box contained a different Xen crystal. Judging by their red or yellow coloration, they were of a lower purity than what he had handled at Black Mesa, but the sheer number was startling nonetheless.

The woman dragged him to the side and they took cover behind a desk. It sounded like just two soldiers; if Gordon had had his guns this wouldn't even be an issue, but as it was he didn't even have the gravity gun. After being shot at earlier, his shield remained at 6, but his health was good at 88; there was still a welt at the back of his head, but he'd stopped tasting blood a while ago.

The pair of soldiers slowed to a stop just outside the door.

"It's empty." They must have found the containment unit. "Inform Lamant."

Gordon turned to the woman in the dark and signed, (I need to find my weapons.)

Her gaze just followed his hand movements distrustfully.

(_Weapons_, I need -) he tried spelling it. Nothing. Just his luck.

The soldiers paced mere feet out the door.

That same look from before crossed her face, like she was about to sneeze. With panicked eyes, Gordon waved at her to stop, do anything to just not sneeze! She convulsed, but with her nose pinched and her mouth covered, it was nearly silent.

He relaxed.

"Bless you," the sphere remarked.

"What was that?"

Chell only had time to press the sphere's iris into her abdomen to stifle its light before the soldiers inched into the room shotgun barrels first. Scribbling into her wrist panel she wrote, _'fire lazers!'_

To which the sphere responded, voice muffled but horribly audible in the silence, "_Why_ would I have lasers."

The soldiers spun around and in the same moment Chell pivoted the sphere to face them - the white light flared into their eyes, blinding their night vision. While they recoiled in pain, Gordon blindsided the one in front, white armor and a single red eye, while the one in back, black armor and blue goggles, blasted his shotgun in the fight's general direction - to Gordon's surprise, it wasn't ordinary buckshot but a _pulse shotgun_ - which shattered a tower of Xen crystal containers in the process. The precious stones skittered across the tile.

While lambda-man and the white-armor poured all their strength into angling the shotgun toward the other's head, the black-armored soldier cleared his vision and lowered his gun at Chell's face.

Out of options, she launched wads of portal energy to distract him - and one struck a crimson crystal the size of a walnut. It began pouring out pure, bloody light into every corner of the room and flew up to the ceiling.

And then everything else flew up to the ceiling, too.

Amid the shower of junk as gravity reversed, Chell was the only one quick enough to pivot midair and land on her feet - just in time to kick the disoriented black-armor under a falling desk.

Gordon and the Elite crashed as one into the ceiling, their cumulative weight crumpling the plaster squares; the weapon fumbled from their hands so he rammed his elbow into the Elite's mask again, and again, and _again_ until the giant ocular lens cracked and he fell limp.

The two humans stood panting and pinned to the ceiling as the miniature Xen crystal continued to spill out red light. He glared at her; what the _hell_ did she do? Gordon hadn't seen Chell fire her portal gun, but he knew something must have activated the crystal and had the vague sense it was her fault.

It could have just as easily irradiated their organs or sent them back in time or turned them into a hamburger with extra pickles. That's the funny thing about exotic matter: it messed with space-time, which Gordon had learned was generally not something you wanted to mess with. He estimated Xen crystals like these were 25-60% exotic matter, essentially billions of quantum computers overlaid in crystalline structures; the purest one he'd ever heard of was 92%, and that had caused the goddamn Resonance Cascade.

The walnut-sized oddity shuddered, snapped in half, and dropped everything back to the floor.

Chell landed easy as anything on her feet as gravity reoriented itself, but the lambda-man slammed into his side with a pained groan. His armor was impressive, she had to admit, but judging by the stiffness of the joints and sheer bulk of the thing it limited his mobility. She offered him her hand; leaning back she channeled all the weight into her boots as she helped him to his feet.

Rolling his shoulder, he gave her a half-grin. He mouthed the words, "thank you," at her as clearly as he could and demonstrated the sign for it: just lower your flat hand down from your chin. He repeated it until she understood.

(Thank you,) she repeated, uncertain with the motion. Her right arm still in the portal gun, she used her left.

He brightened and made to high-five her in celebration, but she turned from the contact to focus on her portal gun. Peeling up the corner of the duct tape, she pressed the data packet and note to his chest.

Before he could examine the gift, a shuffling in the corner drained the friendliness from his face: the soldier Chell had kicked under a desk now lay dazed and spread-eagle on top and was regaining consciousness.

He scanned the room until he swiped the shotgun from the ground, staggered over to the soldier, pressed the barrel against the nape of his neck, and -

_**Bam!**_

Chell jumped out of her skin, but couldn't tear her eyes from the sight. A solid, concussive blast the color of sunlight burst chunks of _something_ into a dripping splatter on the wall.

The soldier's mask dropped with a conclusive _thud_. It was suddenly so quiet, _so quiet!_ She could hear her own breathing scratching at her ears as the man wiped a red drop off his cheekbone like it was nothing. Her head craned to look at the white-armor on the ground; she'd thought he'd just been knocked out, but drops of blood dribbled onto the tile from the crack in his lens.

He killed them. He _killed_ them. _He killed them!_

It was pretty damn clear that _whoever_ this lambda guy was, there was a very good _reason_ he'd been locked up - he was probably some international criminal on his way to trial, that's why all these guards were after him.

What the _hell_ did she do.

Human didn't mean bad. Human didn't mean good. But it had been humans who'd dragged her into this hell of a new life in the first place, and she'd been an idiot for getting herself involved again.

She scooped from the floor an amber shard into her hand, which tingled even through her glove. The workings of the crystals were a mystery to her, but they seemed harmless enough.

"_Ehh!_" A guttural sound from her throat got his attention just before she threw the shard right at his stupid face - he caught it by force of habit in the time it took her to leap toward the door.

She only saw him staring at the piece in his hand - with the wide eyes and tilted lips of someone who was completely confused by a situation - and fired a wad of energy directly at it.

* * *

><p><em>What the <em>shit_ is her problem?_ He'd thought they'd been getting on pretty well. Gordon was lucky enough that the crystal the military woman shot did nothing more sinister than blare _La Vie En Rose_ at triple speed. By the time it had died down and was clearly _not_ about to end the world, she'd already disappeared down the hall. He sent a sarcastic salute after her. People who hung out with him - particularly blatant redshirts like her - tended to not last long.

The new pulse shotgun, a full matte black, was longer and thinner than his old SPAS-12. He held it lengthwise in plain view of his glasses for several long seconds while the head-up display scanned it.

_Bing_, a miniature image of it appeared in the number four weapon slot on his glasses, along with an ammo counter in the bottom right.

"Defensive weapon selection system activated," his suit reported as he slipped the weapon into one of the compartments on the back of his suit. "Ammunition level monitoring activated."

That was one hell of a feature for _research equipment_, but who was he to judge.

It didn't take long until he was back at the hole in the wall and the site of the massacre; once he was certain the water creature was no longer here, he picked through the husks of dead Overwatch for his weapons. Their bodies, more armor than anything else, were uncannily lightweight - there weren't even any stains on the floor. Every last drop of moisture had been absorbed.

Only his gravity gun was still here. That was a blessing, at least. Slipping over his shoulder the electrical wires that served as its strap, he stood at the brink of the hole in the wall. The length of the completed bridge extended the width of the crevasse, a sickly black limb that branched out into mechanic roots on the other side. And then there was the Borealis itself, once a research vessel with a promising future but already a beautiful ruin. Blurred by distance and snowfall, sinister bloated figures hovered in packs of three or four as they picked over the wreckage: Advisors.

A sick kind of uncertainty settled in his stomach at the sight, part fear and part anticipation. He was on his own.

Oddly enough, his concern wasn't for his own safety: the man in the suit seemed to have all his i's dotted and t's crossed when it came to keeping his top employee alive - Gordon could probably douse himself in pig's blood, go up to a great white shark, then give an award-winning impression of a dying seal, and somehow even _it_ would turn out to be Barney in a mask.

What really concerned him was a repeat of the Black Mesa Incident, really the last time he'd been fighting on his own. Without allies, he didn't have to think about what he was doing or their consequences or whether the introspective physicist he thought of himself as would approve. He didn't have to worry about scaring someone. Without people, Gordon was terrified of what he could do, and how easily he could bring himself to do it.

He stalled: he patted his chest and - _oh yeah_, she'd given him something. Duct taped to his armor was some sort of data packet and a note on a scrap of crinkly paper.

_'__IMPORTANT__!_

_Take USB to Siphon 3_

_Then Siphon 1_

_Stay in contact w/ J&L'_

The handwriting was a little immature, but at least legible; there was also a scribble of a map. He also wasn't too sure who L was, but J had to be Dr. Mossman. The freezing expanse of bridge stared back at him, and then he turned aside to ascend the hallway. Something sat uncomfortably in him: relief or disappointment, he couldn't tell.

Siphon 3 looked to be to the north of where he was now - didn't he pass a door for the garage earlier? He mashed the button for his suit radio, a tiny rectangle on his left wrist, which brought up little blips of static on the channel.

"Seems to be some interference," someone noted over the connection.

Gordon brightened at the result, pressed it faster.

"Well, that's not possible," the unmistakable voice of Judith responded, "it's the encrypted channel..."

"It - look at this, it looks like it's coming from the hazard suit."

"The _hazard_ - Doctor Freeman? That can't be you, can it?"

He grimaced, pinched the bridge of his nose. How the hell was he supposed to respond? At least it _was_ her.

"Just try to give us some indication this isn't random noise."

He appeared at a loss for ideas, but then his eyes unfocused, as though he were looking at some invisible chart a foot from his eyes. There were certain things he'd made a point to memorize long ago, back when the prospect of having wild adventures was invigorating. With the button for the suit radio, he alternated between clicking it quickly and holding it down.

_Click click click click / click / click hold click / click_.

He could only hope they got the gist: dots and dashes. He reached the door that led to the garage which led down a long, narrow hallway, but at least this one was straight and level.

There was a pause, a murmuring of hidden voices, and then, "Alright, tell me this: where were you studying before you took the research assistant position at Black Mesa?"

The hallway opened up into, sure enough, a garage, stocked with some junk and a few rows of vehicles, sleds, and snowmobiles. It was all contained on the other side of a ceiling-high locked gate, though.

.. / -. / -. / ... / -... / .-. / ..- / -.-. / -.- he answered, looking for a key.

"Freeman? It's Leon, you and I met earlier at Shorepoint Base. What was swarming when you made off for Nova Prospekt?"

Gordon rolled his eyes at the memory, but he must be the L from the note. He tapped .- / -. / - / .-.. / .. / - - - / -. / ...

"Sorry about all that, Doc," Leon continued, relieved, "we just had to make sure this wasn't a trick by the Combine."

_Yeah, yeah_, he finally just jammed his elbow against the padlock and pushed his way into the rows of vehicles.

A snowmobile would work. He settled on one that could take the hazard suit's weight and tested the engine before walking it toward the garage door. Frozen shut, he had to drag it open manually. Painful white light flooded the room.

"We sent someone over to you with an information packet; did you get it?" Judith's inquiry was laced with nerves.

All he managed in response to Judith's question was an affirmative -.- - while he focused on revving the engine and rolling out onto the snow. An ancient sign post pointed in three directions: Siphon 1, Siphon 2, and Siphon 3. He squinted in the last direction; although any path had worn away long ago, there were wooden posts at regular intervals with red flags tied to them: ragged, but still distinct. The treads of the snowmobile crunched over the fresh snow as it picked up speed.

"Oh thank goodness, that's such a relief. We weren't sure how dependable she'd be, but we really didn't have any other choice: I have to stay undetected where I am. You see, Dr. Freeman, I think I've figured out what to do about the Borealis!"

_That_ got his attention. Some of Eli's last words echoed across his mind, _'Destroy that ship! Whatever it takes!'_ Did she even know what had happened to him?

A flock of birds, little black dots at this point, were approaching as he passed the first flagged post.

"The Combine had already found it by the time I got here, but only more soldiers and Advisors have shown up since; the place is swarming with them. We _cannot_ let the technology fall into their hands, no matter what. I've been going over the research here at Adlivun Electric, and it looks as though we can use some of the old equipment here to our advantage.

"They developed something known as siphons," she continued, "which scan parallel universes for exotic matter and teleport samples here for experiments. No doubt you remember Black Mesa would send entire teams of scientists to Xen to collect crystals, but the environment was just so hostile. According to the logs, back in the 1970's the computers here detected a _massive_ spike in the energy they associate with exotic matter."

_The Borealis_.

"They attempted to pull the source through to Earth for study, but it was simply too large: the siphons they had at the time were only capable of crystal-sized transmissions."

"Long story short, Doc," Leon put in, "they took a long-ass time - a couple decades, maybe - upgrading the siphons up to snuff until they could drag the Borealis here. No doubt they were surprised to find Aperture tech, but apparently not enough to return it."

"Yes, and to handle an object of that size, all three siphons needed to work in harmony with each other." Judith had, again, taken over. "Which is essentially what I need you to do now, Dr. Freeman. I've been acquainting myself with the technology, and I'm certain that if you can just download that data packet at the two other siphons, then I'd be able to synchronize the systems and reverse the whole process."

Gordon passed a fourth flagged post; the birds had grown to fat little shapes in the sky. Did he hear her correctly?

"I can transmit the Borealis off of Earth someplace safe until the Resistance can decide what to do with it. There's a universe parallel to ours with almost no matter and excruciatingly slow passage of time: essentially everything there is in stasis. If you can just download the reversed software, then every soldier, every Advisor, every dangerous piece of technology on that ship - all will be put into stasis until we can handle it, if and when that time ever comes, and until then the Combine won't be able to get their hands on it. If you can do this, Gordon... we win."

* * *

><p>Screw this. Screw <em>all<em> of this.

Chell raced down the spiraling hallway, the repetitive banging of the personality sphere against her hip fading into the background. It didn't matter if she'd made a deal, it didn't matter how difficult navigating this world on her own would be, she'd risk it. You do _not_ kill people - robots and turrets maybe, but never people. She'd sooner _walk_ to civilization than get mixed up in all this drama.

Traveling a circular hallway was surreal; whereas with a straight one you can see the end and have a point of reference, a circular one never seems to end. The horizon of the curve never gets any closer; you just feel like you're running in place and the floor comes up to meet you.

And what the floor brought up to Chell next made her slow to a stop. There were soldiers, more of those black- or white-clad troops, but they were sprawled out across the floor with splattered bullet holes through them. She'd taken the ventilation duct when she'd come up this way earlier, and had missed this entirely.

She couldn't have known how long she stood there, but once she did move it was to kneel down beside one and grip the edge of their gas mask. It pulled away like skin off a dead fish, and her stomach churned at the sight of what lay underneath.

Any pigmentation of the skin had been bleached away into translucency, and stuffed beneath the skin were plastic tubes and metal wires; an oozing port the size of a golf ball had been gouged out of their neck; any racial or gender markers had been scraped away until only cold efficiency remained. They were human, she'd been right about that, but so far removed from the concept that killing them was probably a mercy.

Her mind rejected it. Shaking her head, she peeled off another's mask: the same bleached skin, the same chemical port, the same dead eyes and cybernetics.

If she were anyone else but Chell, she might have passed out. Even though she couldn't, consciously, remember anything further back than waking up in GLaDOS's test chamber, her experiences were still carved onto the inside of her skull and dictated every choice she made. So if she hadn't spent most of her childhood jumping through obstacle courses and answering questions; if she hadn't dug through Aperture Science and found every twisted experiment imaginable; if she hadn't been to Bring Your Daughter to Work Day, tasted neurotoxin on the air, and watched people drop left and right like flies, then she might have curled up right there on the floor and suffered a complete mental breakdown.

As it was, however, she just steadied herself against the swaying walls and swallowed the bile in her throat. And the little compass rose in her mind changed direction.

_Alright, Lambda._ Fingernails digging into her palms, she marched herself down the hall and into the tunnel access room. _I'll play your game._

Three steel doors waited in an otherwise empty room; she made herself face the passage behind her, the one that said _'Siphon 3'_ in chipped black paint. The door itself had fallen off its hinges long ago, and was now held across the frame with thick fingers of white ice. Completely frozen over.

Every plan, every worry dropped from her thoughts as she turned in place. She saw the steady lights overhead, heard the hum of the ventilation system, and smiled.

Well, this was a quick fix. Protruding from the water main in the ceiling was a red valve the size of a steering wheel; she leaped up, clamped her fingers onto it, and swung her body in heavy swings until it _clanked_ off, gushing out hot water onto the door.

The ice snapped, cracked, and fell away, revealing a crooked tunnel of mint green ice. As she started moving down the tunnel with side-to-side skating motions, she didn't notice that the water, still spilling out onto the ice, had turned bright neon blue.

* * *

><p><em>Do not! Trust! Birds!<em> Gordon's snowmobile strained to maintain its breakneck speed toward Siphon 3. Turned out, what he'd mistaken for a flock of fat birds was in reality those shitdamn scanner bots from City 17, the ones that flashed light in your eyes so you had to stumble around like an idiot with your arms in front of you for ten seconds.

"We're picking up radio chatter; APC's are headed your way, Doctor Freeman, and a _lot_ of them. Didn't she tell you to take the tunnel?!"

As a greyed-out dome on the horizon approached, so did the Combine vehicles from all sides.

The scanners bobbed in the air trying to veer him off course - they'd start blaring an alarm and dive bomb him, which meant he had half a second to aim the gravity gun, pluck the fucker right out of the air, and blast it into the snow before it had the chance to blow all his limbs off.

Siphon 3! He didn't bother with slowing down - the snowmobile plowed through the double doors, shattering them on their hinges. Even before the vehicle had skidded to a halt, Gordon had leaped off and practically flew into the console. He stopped only long enough to locate a software port and slap the data packet in, then turned his attention to the snowmobile; with the parking brake on he strapped the duct tape around the throttle until it pressed against the handlebar, tossed a few live grenades into the basket on the back, and yanked off the parking brake - the engine howled and the whole contraption propelled back through the double doors.

He could only hope that would stall them long enough to find an exit; there was an arched steel door at the opposite end of the dome, but it refused to budge. An explosion outside; the grenades had gone off. He turned back to the room; a man-sized needle pointed downward from the ceiling, whatever machinations it performed inert. There was also what appeared to be a hairline crack in his vision across the room, but it must have been a fault in his vision. A monitor on the counter was stuck at, _'Still Downloading / Stadig Henter'_.

A soldier, a crest on his uniform labeled _C29,_ staggered into the room and loosed a dotted line of sparks along the wall which then drained the last few points off his shield - he hefted his shotgun to his shoulder and blasted the soldier three feet. The grenades had bought some time, but there were more coming. His fingers rifled through the ammo pouch on his belt without taking his eyes off the door.

_Come on, come on! Twelve shells left_.

* * *

><p>Chell estimated she was a little over halfway through the tunnel when she caught sight of something in the corner of her eye. A long, snakelike limb was undulating somewhere deep within the ice, like some sort of moving underground river. She checked her wrist panel, but either it was not alive or it was cold as shit: no red blip appeared on the screen. The stream flowed in loops and spirals, and then careened straight toward Chell.<p>

A growl, loud and deep as thunder, grew and echoed through the tunnel.

Maybe someone else would have stopped, looked over their shoulder, and gaped in horror before running for their life, but Chell knew better. The moment she heard the ice around her beginning to buckle, she grabbed the info sphere by the handle and began skating the fastest her legs could carry her.

The noise crescendoed - a glance to the side revealed cracks racing across the walls like lightning strikes - and everything began to collapse.

Truck-sized chunks of ceiling collapsed like dominoes, so close Chell could feel flecks of ice striking the backs of her legs as they pumped back and forth, clambering to maintain balance as the floor crumpled beneath her.

The tunnel curved to the side and the end was in sight - but the steel door was shut!

By this point, momentum carried her forward more than anything else. Lungs heaving and exercise-induced nausea unbalancing her head, she forced one last burst of speed as the dead end flew up to meet her, and leaped into the air feet-first. Her long fall boots _slammed_ a giant dent into the steel and the door screamed off its hinges, bursting into the new room and screeching to a stop with showers of sparks on either side.

She'd only gone from one life-threatening situation to another: Siphon 3 was a warzone. Soldiers, most in black armor but some in white, poured through the opposite double doors and across the giant red 3 in the tiles. Beside a monitor flashing the words _'Download Complete / Hent Komplet'_ was that man in orange armor, holding the bottleneck as best he could with a single shotgun like a goddamn one-man army.

The doorframe to the tunnel, spitting out its last few chunks of ice, was packed tight: there was no going back.

With all the instincts of a woman who had once looked at giant hydraulic presses and thought, _'Yeah, that looks like an elevator to me!'_ something else caught her eye: suspended vertically in space from floor to ceiling was an intangible grey crack.

Chell wasn't one for introspection. As she began firing portal after portal at the crack - _blue - orange - blue - orange - blue_, she didn't stop to wonder why she was helping the strange lambda man with the penchant for shotguns. Maybe, much like she'd tried helping that family of personality spheres, she just _empathized_ with the unlucky son of a bitch; her intuition told her he was the underdog in this scenario, and she knew all too well what that was like.

Or maybe, despite all she thought of herself and what GLaDOS had whispered into her ear... Maybe Chell was actually a pretty good person.

She wasn't one for introspection. She wasn't even one for right or wrong. There was just _now_.

The crack yawned open across the width of the dome to another, warmer, world: one with a wide-open teal sky and wisps of silver clouds.

She turned to face Lambda, who stared at the tear in astonishment. With a half grin - the first indication she felt anything but disdain for him - she stepped through the seam, and let him decide whether or not to follow before it snapped shut.

He did.


End file.
